4 questions golf faces due to postponed Olympics

The postponement of the 2020 Olympics directly impacts how the golf world will operate during the next year. When the PGA Tour eventually returns, these four questions will need to be answered:

Will an event fill the open slot?

If the PGA Tour returns prior to July 30, which would have been the starting date for the golf portion of the Olympics, there will be a hole in the schedule.

The potential suitors can be narrowed down to the Masters and PGA Championship, with the U.S. Open possibly joining the conversation if Winged Foot is unable to host the tournament in June.

It's unlikely the Masters would be played in the middle of summer due to the heat in Augusta, Georgia, and less-than-ideal turf conditions, which makes the PGA Championship at TPC Harding Park in San Francisco the leading candidate to be played from July 30 to Aug. 2, if golf returns by that point.

What's the impact on 2021?

The PGA Tour based a portion of its schedule on the existence of the Summer Games, most notably shifting the WGC-FedEx St. Jude ahead of the Open Championship to make room for Tokyo 2020. The presence of the Olympics created the most congested schedule since the FedEx Cup Playoffs moved to August.

Will the PGA Tour take the same approach in 2021?

The Tour was already forced to bump next year's Valspar Championship out of its regular slot in March to the end of April due to one fewer week on the calendar prior to the Masters. That means either the 2021 Zurich Classic or Wells Fargo Championship will likely need to be rescheduled.

Will the PGA Tour even participate?

It's easy, for a few reasons, to speculate that the PGA Tour may ignore Olympic golf altogether.

First, the Tour will likely release its 2020-21 schedule by the end of July, at which point the dates for the rescheduled Olympics may not yet be determined.

Additionally, after canceling a handful of events in 2020, the PGA Tour could feel pressure from sponsors to run as many tournaments as possible next year, and it may opt to carry on without having to worry about creating room on the schedule for the Olympics.

How will qualifying work?

After the Official World Golf Rankings were paused when play was, the International Golf Federation announced that June 22 would be the qualification deadline for the 2020 Summer Games.

That date will almost certainly be changed, as the Olympics won't occur for another year, but no such revision has been made yet. The date could also be left as is, which would mean there likely wouldn't be any events played before the cutoff.

If the qualification deadline is pushed back a year, players like Tiger Woods will have time to work their way back into a qualifying spot. Woods currently sits seventh for the United States, with the four highest-ranked Americans inside the top 15 of the world rankings securing a spot in Tokyo.