Should Bryson DeChambeau be at the 2024 Olympics? Players in Paris weigh in

While there are plenty of big names in the golf world not in Paris for the 2024 Olympic men's golf competition at Le Golf National, one name is perhaps the biggest omission: Bryson DeChambeau.

The 2024 U.S. Open champion did not make the team. He couldn’t earn enough points to gain a spot among the top four Americans in the Official World Golf Ranking after the win at Pinehurst No. 2. His only events to earn ranking points during the past two years were majors, and because LIV Golf events don’t receive points, there are 14 times a year he plays that aren’t recorded for ranking purposes.

His win moved him, at the time, to No. 10 in the world, but it wasn’t enough to get into the top four Americans. Scottie Scheffler, Xander Schauffele, Collin Morikawa and Wyndham Clark are in Paris representing Team USA.

Only 60 players made the field for the Olympic golf competition, with a max of four players per country if the four players are inside the top 15 in the OWGR.

During pre-tournament press conferences in Paris, nearly every golfer was asked the question whether DeChambeau should be in the field, and they gave a wide variety of answers.

Here's what golfers had to say about DeChambeau and whether he should be in the Olympics.

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Xander Schauffele

"My goal was to qualify for this team. I don't really -- you know, I'll look at the requirements and as long as I'm in it, then I'm going to try my best to qualify for it and that's what I did.

"In terms of making it better, I haven't put a whole lot of thought. Bryson obviously played really well and has played well in the majors overall, and won the U.S. Open in fashion. So I'm not sure. I'm not sure how to include or rank events and those things. That would be for someone else to figure out."

Shane Lowry

"No. 9 in the world is not here, either, for the Americans. The American team is a hard team to make."

Rory McIlroy

"Yeah, I think that's the nature of qualification for the Olympics. I mean, you could have the fifth-best sprinter in the world but if he's from a certain country, he's not able to make it.

"So I think it's just the way that the qualification works in the Olympic Games, and that's not just in golf. That's in other disciplines, as well."

Jon Rahm

"I think you can always do it, like with other sports, and allow the countries to pick themselves. There needs to be some guidelines, but like Team USA Basketball has free come to choose whoever they want.

"I understand it's a different circumstance, but I think you need to let each country choose who they want to play, and in the future, I would also like to see some team aspect in the Olympics, as well, right. I mean, we are here representing Spain.

"So I would love to actually, as 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, right."

Jason Day

"Everything that we've done in our golfing career has always been pretty much based off the World Rankings system. On the Tour now, it's starting to kind of change a little bit with the Signature Events, you have to finish inside the top 50 of the FedEx Cup. So there's a couple of criterias you're trying to look for.

"I think it would be, just because there are some players that get to come and play the Olympics that you kind of don't -- that don't play on the PGA Tour or some other main tour. So it's nice to be able to see them and give them the opportunity.

"Has anyone else talked about like a different system? I wouldn't think there would be another system to go to.

"I may look smart but I'm not."

Tom Kim

"I think the world ranking provides you the status of who has played the best golf, and I think that's why it works so well because you see the top 10 players in the world, you don't just see them -- obviously the divisor plays a role but the majority, the 90 percent, there's a reason why they are inside the top 20 in the world. You look at their performance over the past few years, it's always been consistent.

"You don't have a guy who is 200th in the world suddenly within two weeks reach 50th in the world. It's years and years of consistent performance. And I think that's why it's so good to consistently have, when you do qualify for the Olympics, it's actually because you've played the best for your country and you're leading and you deserve to be on top. That's why I think this system is so consistent and good for us players.

"When we do step up, we have a lot of confidence in us saying that, I deserve to be here and I deserve to represent my country."

Ben An

"There are zero (Korean) players in LIV Golf. So it doesn't matter the World Ranking or not. There's a lot of controversies right now whether it's there or not, but for us, there's no Koreans on LIV Golf.

"So everybody, all the Korean golfers, are playing Official World Golf Ranking system. It's going to be hard for us to try like U.S., other sports, because a lot of good players live in U.S., mostly and it's not fair to have qualifier in the U.S. for Korean golfers and for us to fly over to Korea and find the time to go and qualify.

"As of now, for Korean golfers, I guess the world golf ranking is the only way kind of to tell who goes to the Olympics. Maybe the cutoff date could be a little later. I don't know, two, three weeks before.

"But we have to get ready in the uniforms and everything. It's really hard to tell. But like I said, Sungjae has been in great form. Maybe he could have been here instead of one us, but the cutoff was the U.S. Open, it was me and Tom.

"I'm not a clever guy; so I can't think of another way than just using the World Golf Ranking as of now. That kind of tells you who is a good golfer or not."

Abraham Ancer

"I personally don't get too involved in politics to be honest or technicalities.

"But yeah, I think it would be great if the countries can get to pick who they bring and just be like, hey, these are the guys that we believe have a chance to win a medal, or this is the guys that I want to bring. Maybe that would be a way to fix it. It's not going to be easy. Not everybody is going to be happy.

"It's definitely tough. But yeah, for example, there's other sports that I that if you're in the Pan American Games, you win a medal. It sort of like qualification to go to the Olympic Games. For example, I won the gold medal in Pan American Games but that didn't do absolutely anything. Nothing.

"Yeah, it's a little bit weird.

"I also think -- this is not even the question but I feel like there's a lot of missed opportunities, also, in the format. I think it could be so much cooler having more options for medals team-wise. You can do so many things that it would bring so much excitement. You can do match play. You can do so many things that it will just elevate, I think, the format we only get to do this four times a year, every four years if we're lucky."

This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Should Bryson DeChambeau be at the 2024 Olympics? Players in Paris weigh in