Scottie Scheffler believes the men's Olympic golf event should continue to use the Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR) as its qualification process, despite calls for change from Jon Rahm.
Scheffler is one of four American stars in action at this week's golf event at Le Golf National, competing alongside Xander Schauffele, Colin Morikawa, and Wyndham Clark. As things stand the Olympic tournament field is made up of the best-performing players from each nation per the world rankings.
Team USA is the only squad with four players in action, due to Scheffler, Schauffele, Morikawa, and Clark all inside the top-10 in the world, thus making them automatically eligible.
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The decision to base the event's field off the OWGR list has been questioned by many, amid LIV Golf's ongoing issue with the rankings. A whole host of big-name players have seen their names fall down the world rankings due to LIV events going ahead without OWGR points on offer.
This has led to the likes of Bryson DeChambeau, Cameron Smith, and Brooks Koepka missing out this week. Scheffler however feels the rankings are a fair way of building each team, rather than a selection committee process. I mean, I think it's nice having a pretty standard rating system for how you can choose the team," he said after Thursday's opening round.
"I think it gets a little bit objective when you have a selection committee choosing teams. Most of our team events, you have guys that can qualify automatically and there are some that are chosen. We had tournaments in amateur golf where the whole team was chosen at times.
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"I'm a fan of having a standard system where you know where you stand in terms of getting in like it is now. If there is a committee that would decide the last couple spots, but also it's so challenging being in the United States getting on the team. You get four guys because we are all Top 15 in the world and it's still by far the hardest team to make.
"If we can bring all of our best players, the field for this tournament would look a lot different and I'm sure we would have a better chance of taking home more medals but it's hard to choose the best four every year." Scheffler's LIV rival Rahm is one of the players in action in Paris who is in favor of a selection process per each nation.
He is in action alongside fellow LIV star David Puig, with the pair representing Spain. "Allow the countries to pick themselves," Rahm stated ahead of the event. "There needs to be some guidelines, but Team USA basketball has freedom 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." Rahm and Scheffler are both tied in sixth following their opening round in Paris on Thursday, both carding a four-under-par 67 on day one.
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