Rahm wants changes to Olympic golf format, selection process

It's safe to say Jon Rahm isn't a huge fan of the Olympic golf format or selection process.

Qualification was based on the Official World Golf Ranking, but Rahm, who's representing Spain in the 2024 Games, would like to see each country choose its representatives.

"I think you can always do it, like with other sports, allow the countries to pick themselves," Rahm said, according to CBS' Kyle Porter. "There needs to be some guidelines, but, like, Team USA Basketball has freedom to choose whoever they want."

The top 15 on the OWGR automatically qualified for the Olympics, with a maximum of four golfers per country. After those 15, the Olympic field consists of up to the top two eligible players from a country, as long as that nation doesn't already have at least two players in the top 15. There's a total of 60 golfers in each of the men's and women's fields.

LIV Golf tournaments don't count toward OWGR points. So while Rahm - who defected to the PGA TOUR's rival circuit in December - was still able to qualify, some of the sport's bigger names are absent from the Olympics. Tyrrell Hatton (Great Britain), Sergio Garcia (Spain), Louis Oosthuizen (South Africa), Cam Smith (Australia), and Bryson DeChambeau (United States) are among LIV Golf's top players this season and might've been bound for Paris if it didn't come down to OWGR points.

Rahm also isn't overly fond of the format, which consists of four rounds of individual stroke play.

"In the future, I would also like to see some team aspect in the Olympics, as well, right," he said. "I mean, we are here representing Spain. So I would love to actually (have) a partner or somehow, whether as a combined sport or us playing together, to be able to represent Spain. That would be extremely nice to share the stage with another player, to do something different to maybe what we do every other day."

Rahm withdrew from the 2020 Tokyo Games after testing positive for COVID-19. Xander Schauffele (USA) won gold with Rory Sabbatini (Slovakia) and C.T. Pan (Chinese Taipei) taking silver and bronze, respectively.

The men's Olympic golf tournament begins Thursday at Le Golf National. The women's tournament starts Aug. 7. The full field of participants can be found here.