RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) – Five Americans were together on the Olympic Golf Course, checking out everything from the three types of sand in the bunkers to which side of the fairway allowed for the best angle to the green during a practice round Tuesday.
The group included Gil Hanse, who was not in a team uniform, didn’t have clubs and won’t be competing for a medal. And yet he still has plenty at stake.
Hanse designed the golf course. And he had more than just the best players in mind when he created it.
“We needed to build a golf course for the competition, which we knew was how the golf course ultimately would be judged,” Hanse said Tuesday. “But we also had to help grow the game in Brazil, and it had to be playable for the public.”
The result was a 7,128-yard course tucked into 240 acres with no trees and no rough, with humps and hollows along the fairways that resembles a links course, and with native areas that make it seem as though it belongs in the famed sand belt region of Melbourne.