Photos: Olympic Golf Course Looking Like A Golf Course

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Nice set of aerials Tweeted by the International Golf Federation account showing the Rio 2016 golf course growing in nicely one year out from the Games.

You can check them out at this link and enlarge each a bit.

Most encouraging here is that the native areas look decent, meaning a year from now they have the chance to have taken on a maturity that will look better.

One Day Olympic Golf Test Event On The Docket For 2016

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Though generally thought to have needed to be a year out from the Games, the International Golf Federation has pushed a rumored test event for Olympic golf from Thanksgiving weekend to closer to the games.

Alex Miceli reports from The Open where officials revealed that when the even it s played, it'll be a one-day event and sounds more like a contractual obligation than any kind of serious competition. This should ensure that the

The International Olympic Committee had scheduled a test event for the last week of November, but after a thorough review by the PGA Tour agronomy staff and IGF representatives in June, the IGF recommended that the test event be delayed until early 2016.

“We think it would be better to have the test event take place after having had the benefit of a second grow-in season,” IGF vice president Ty Votaw said during a news conference at St. Andrews, site of this week’s British Open. Votaw, a PGA Tour executive, added that the timeline was a better fit “taking into consideration the availability of players, world-class players, on a November-December time frame.”

Rio Fun: Turkey Test And A Competing Golf Event!?

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Golfweek’s Forecaddie reports a few tidbits about the upcoming Rio golf course test event in preparation for the 2016 Games. The event still looks likely for Thanksgiving weekend (Nov. 26-29), may be a very casual competition and remains course condition dependent.

The most depressing reminder from the Forecaddie: the PGA Tour intends to conduct events during the Rio Games.

I certainly understand that taking two weeks off will deprive players of opportunities, and just taking the week off of the men's event would be rude to the women.

But this could also mean an international player could face a decision: play the Olympics or show up at the Wyndham or whatever the event is that is played, and try to retain my card.

That scenario, plus the optics of playing events during a once-every-four-year event that has been billed as triumphant for the game, can only undermine the golf-in-the-Olympics cause.

U.S. Anti Doping CEO: Tour Drug Policy Has Loopholes

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As the world's top golfers are about to be subjected to more stringent drug testing in the lead-up to the Rio 2016 Games, Rex Hoggard takes a comprehensive look at what players will experience.

The biggest changes: "Whereabouts Testing" that requires players to inform the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency where they will be for one hour a day, seven days a week.

USADA officials say a smartphone app will allow competitors to report their locations instantly, but the penalty for a missed test can be severe – three whereabouts testing “failures” will count as a positive test.

Also of note: blood testing. The only way to test HGH, the most likely substance that would be abused.

But regarding the PGA Tour's policy to date, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency's Travis Tygart suggests the tour policy has loopholes.

“If you have the obligation to not give a sanction or to stick the file in the drawer and not go forward, I’m not in any way suggesting that’s what [the Tour] have done, but the policy allows for that. Without any accountability elsewhere it’s hard to know for sure,” Tygart told GolfChannel.com.

“We’ve certainly seen other high-profile sports, cycling in the past, where in ’99 with Lance Armstrong’s corticosteroid positive, that’s exactly what the sport did. After the report that just came out detailing that sad saga it was clear they did it because it was going to be harmful to them and to the sport.

“That’s the pressure and the tension that you have going back to the fox guarding the henhouse. It’s awfully difficult and in our experience impossible to both promote and police your sport because you have this inherent duty to make the brand look good and not have any bad news out there.”

Oh not our fox!