This year the Myrtle Beach World Am, next year the Olympics for Brazilians

The 2016 Summer Olympics Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, might do a lot for the game of golf worldwide.

The sport is being played in the Olympics next year for the first time since 1904.

Many in Brazil are hoping the games will also give the sport a boost in their country.

The Olympic golf course just west of Rio has been completed, and the world’s best golfers will be playing it next August.

“It’s supposed to be a really awesome course, and what’s nice about it is it’s going to be a public course after the Olympic Games to boost the game itself,” said Joao Tomazeli of Americana, Brazil.

Tomazeli is among a group of 12 avid golfers from Brazil participating in the 32nd Myrtle Beach World Amateur Championship this week.

Currently, the game is played on a very limited scale in Brazil.

Brazil is South America’s largest and most populous country and has barely 100 golf courses, according to the R&A of Scotland, which governs the rules of golf in most countries, including Brazil.

It has the second most courses in South America to Argentina, though the vast country has barely more courses than the Grand Strand.

The state of Sao Paulo has many of the courses, and Rio only has only a couple other 18-hole layouts.

And there are only a few truly municipal public golf courses in Brazil.

Tomazeli believes a nose-diving economy has kept golf from becoming more popular in Brazil in the past few years since the announcement of golf rejoining the Olympics in Rio. “The problem is the cost of playing doesn’t help that much,” he said.

The Olympic course was designed by Gil Hanse with input from World Golf Hall of Famer Amy Alcott. Part of the course west of Rio was carved out of a nature preserve and it was criticized and rallied against by some environmental activists and prosecutors, but it was completed earlier this year.

“I think the Olympics will have an impact on golf in Brazil, I think more after they’re over,” Tomazeli said. “Once the big players come and the kids will be able to see them, and the course will be there ready, so I think there will be more clinics and camps going.”

Tomazeli believes the course will become a hub for the development of junior golf with the help of the Brazilian Golf Confederation. “That’s what they’ve promised. That’s what they’re selling,” Tomazeli said.

Many of Brazil’s courses are semi-private and accept outside play for a fairly high rate. A round at an average course costs about $100, Tomazeli said, but with an exchange rate of 3.76 Brazilian reals to 1 U.S. dollar, the $100 is pretty steep. “Compared to here golf there is outrageous,” Tomazeli said.

Tomazeli is a member of Campinas Golf Club in Sumare, Brazil, about a 40-minute outside of the city of Sao Paulo. He is about a 4- to 5-hour drive from Rio.

Tomazeli plans to fly to the Olympic golf tournament to watch it along with his 13-year-old daughter, Isadora, who began playing about 18 months ago and has the golf bug. “She’s a fanatic more than I am,” he said.

Tomazeli said the first wave of Olympic golf tickets is sold out. He’s on a waiting list for the second wave.

He has no doubt the city of Rio and the country itself will put on an Olympics and party befitting one of the world’s largest sporting events.

“In the country we love sports. They’re fusing about the economy, but when it comes, it’s going to be a party,” Tomazeli said. “Rio is changing a lot. They’re getting better infrastructure. So whoever comes down is going to have a blast, for sure.”

He has been impressed with the organization and festive atmosphere of the World Am. Tomazeli, 44, who participated in two Pan American Games in sprint cycling, came in 2011 with just one other Brazilian player, and his wife accompanied him.

The next year six players came, then more in 2013 and about a dozen last year as Tomazeli recruited other players and spread the word. Tomazeli is the only Brazilian player who has attended five consecutive years.

“Myrtle Beach is a great place,” Tomazeli said. “It’s a vacation town with the beach and shopping, and you can go to the 19th hole. The atmosphere overall is pretty nice. We get to play different golf courses. The price is not too high. The people are fun and the event is well-organized.

“We like this kind of tournament.”

Though they are from a few different cities and golf courses, everyone in the Brazilian World Am group knows the others. Six of the players are from Campinas Golf Club, and five live in Rio.

“The golfing world in Brazil is pretty small,” Tomazeli said. “If you don’t know the guy he knows a friend of a friend or something.”

The group could grow in the future. Next year’s World Am will be held less than two weeks after the close of the 2016 Olympics. “I think next year we’re going to have more people, unless the economy dies, so let’s hope not,” Tomazeli said.

The approximate 4,500-mile commute from Sao Paulo to Myrtle Beach isn’t terrible. Tomazeli’s flight itinerary had two layovers from Sao Paulo, in New York and Charlotte. One year he managed to have just one layover, in Atlanta.

This story was originally published September 3, 2015 at 8:25 PM with the headline "This year the Myrtle Beach World Am, next year the Olympics for Brazilians."