After the Dutch National Olympic Committee (NOC) refused to allow three qualified athletes to take part in the Paris Games, DP World Tour pro Joost Luiten successfully appealed against his exclusion. The 38-year-old announced this on Instagram on Wednesday. Golf Post spoke to Luiten about the events after his first round at the BMW International Open and the Dutchman explained his situation in detail for the first time.
“I basically sued the National Olympic Committee”, Luiten told Golf Post. “I didn’t agree with the way it went down. I didn’t agree with the rules they had in place. Halfway through the qualification year, they changed the rules. So it was all one big mess and then, you know, I didn’t meet their criteria. But if they would have started those criteria from the start, I would have qualified straight away in two events.”
According to the rules of the International Golf Federation (IGF) and the IOC, the top 15 in the Olympic Golf Ranking (OGR), which is based on the world golf rankings, qualify – with a maximum of four athletes per country. The 60-strong field will then be filled with the best outside the top 15, with a maximum of two participants per country. In the case of the Netherlands, these are Darius van Driel and Joost Luiten for the men and Anne van Dam and Dewi Weber for the women. However, the Dutch Olympic Committee had its own criteria for golf, which Luiten and others did not fulfil after they were implemented. However, this only happened after the IGF qualification process had long since begun.
As obliged by the court, the Dutch NOC nominated Luiten in time for the tournament at Le Golf National near Paris. But now there is a new problem. “There’s another bit of trouble because now all of a sudden there are 61 people in the field, not 60, because the IOC gave my spot away already. So now it looks like I could go from one court case to the next, but that’s not what I want. Hopefully they can sort the issue”, says the young family man, fearing for his eligibility to compete.
Luiten’s dissatisfaction with his National Olympic Committee goes far beyond the refusal to nominate him: “The whole problem in Holland is that if you let some people that only know the traditional Olympic sports, swimming, athletics, and stuff like that, if you let them make the rules on golf, you get some silly rules. And that’s what basically this is all about. Showing them that they had no clue what they were doing and that it had nothing to do with golf. Unfortunately I had to go to court for it, but at least now hopefully it will open their eyes.”