Joost Luiten has called the Netherlands Olympic Committee's decision to not allow him, Darius Van Driel and Dewi Weber the chance to play as "mindblowing" while Van Driel has called it a "sad day for Dutch golf."
The trio are all ranked outside of the world's top 100 and the Netherlands Golf Federation confirmed that the Netherlands Olympic Committee has not allowed them to tee it up at Le Golf National due to “no reasonable chance of a top eight ranking during the Olympic Games.”
This is despite Darius Van Driel winning on the DP World Tour this season and then-World No.161 Rory Sabbatini winning the silver medal for Slovakia last time out in Tokyo. World No.181 CT Pan also won bronze for Taiwan in Japan three years ago.
Joost Luiten is a six-time DP World Tour winner who has eight runner-up finishes, 10 top-3 finishes and 45 top-10s on the European circuit. He also finished as the top Dutchman at last week's KLM Open in the Netherlands.
"I am very sad to say I wil not play the 2024 Olympics," Joost Luiten wrote in a lengthy statement on Instagram.
"The @nocnsf [Netherlands Olympic Committee] wil not send me even though I have qualified by the international golf federations criteria and the Olympic criteria.
"@nocnsf have there own criteria (good chance to finish top 8) and they don’t think I have a chance to finish in the top 8 of The Olympics (60men field) even though over my 18 year professional career I have finished inside of the top 10 almost 20% of the time and those were 156 man fields. This was 25% in the 2023 season.
"It’s just mindblowing that they say I can not finish top 8 at the @olympics, @nocnsf have absolutely no clue about golf. Also they have changed the criteria’s in dec 2023, if they had those criteria’s from the start in june 2023 I would have qualified at 2 seperate events. That’s even more painfull to me!
"I just don’t get it! Typically Holland, they only understand the typical dutch sports, clearly not golf. So sad and painful."
Van Driel, who has a win, two runners-up finishes and 11 top-10s on the DPWT since 2017, called it a "sad day for Dutch golf."
"No Olympics for Joost Luiten, Dewi Weber and myself although we qualified.
"The [Netherlands Olympic Committee] doesn't have a clue about golf and it a shame we're suffering now. We're not going because of political reasons. mistakes were made by the [Netherlands Golf Federation] for agreeing with the absurd demands on the national qualifications. A sad day for Dutch golf."
Dewi Weber, the world's 302nd-ranked female professional, is also missing out despite qualifying for the Games.
She currently plays on the Epson Tour, the tier below the LPGA, where she has a runner-up and three top-10s this season alone. She was T7th in her most recent start.
"Our own country is saying we don't think you're worthy of being an Olympian, and you're not worthy of representing the Netherlands," Weber told Golf Digest.
"And that, honestly, that hurts."
