Rio de Janeiro’s first open to the public official golf course, the Olympic Golf Course (OGC) has yet to be built but it’s already considered one of the biggest sporting legacies to the Marvellous City. After the delivery of the Olympic Games in 2016, the green as well as its side buildings will be open to the general public.

But what does that actually mean? According to Gustavo Nascimento, Rio 2016™ Organising Committee Head of Sports Venues Design, it means golf course use is not linked to a membership to any golf club, something common in Brazil today. “Just any person will be able to go to the green, buy the Green Fee (a fee to begin playing) and play. Golf clubs and balls will be available for rent”, Gustavo said.

Tanedo is the company responsible for the investment, project development as well as building the OCG and Paulo Goulart de Oliveira is their Executive Director. He reminded that the project’s concept has a higher goal: creating ideal conditions for promoting a quick and expressive rise in the numbers of people practising the sport.

“We will introduce a Golf Academy that will be the main tool in this process of offering conditions for the first contact with the sport, an unlimited access concerning participants’ age and length of play”, Paulo explained.

The complex will have covered training areas equipped with an artificial carpet and grass base where the temperature will be controlled and there will be lighting for nocturnal use. It will host international events and, at the same time, welcome non-professionals interested in practising a new sport. It will be the home of Brazilian golf, the ideal stage for athletes to train and improve their technical skills as well as for discovering new sporting promises.

“This way, we ensure not only the implementation of an excellent Olympic arena but we also add a prominent leisure option to the city of Rio de Janeiro with a service of exceptional value aimed at being something the general public can also experience, and not restricted to high income segments, the case until now”, Tanedo’s Director considered.

Getting people motivated about ecological and environmental issues is also part of the project. Expectations are that golf will be seen as a powerful social inclusion agent with a recognised landscaping value. Adapting areas and spaces into natural habitats and good places for the reintroduction of local fauna and flora, the complex will serve as a self-sustainability tool for the ecological park.

The golf course will be built inside the Marapendi Nature Reserve, in the Barra Zone that will concentrate the greatest number of Rio 2016™ Olympic Games venues. The project is based in a prior licensing and environmental restoration through an ecogenetic process with the goal of renewing the original vegetal cover. Olympic golf is committed to preserving the whole area.

Sports practice will be conciliated with measures permitting a minimum of non-polluting and/or biodegradable chemical products in order to preserve water resources, generate energy efficiency and reduce waste. The Olympic Golf Course will be GEO – Golf Environment Organisation certified.

Golf probably is the only high level tourism product that Rio de Janeiro lacks and, as such, it will generate different jobs as well as additional volumes of service revenues. Programmes dealing with workforce upgrade as well as environmental and wildlife conservation and preservation will be developed, uniting the community in search for a better lifestyle.

The future Golf Course will be the only one capable of hosting the Olympic Games

There has been much debate about hosting Olympic golf in one of Rio’s two private clubs grounds: Gávea or Itanhangá. However, these two golf courses would need investments as important as the ones made for the OGC construction and were therefore discarded by the Rio 2016™ Organising Committee.

“The golf courses don’t have the technical quality required by competitions of this magnitude. Besides, they don’t have the necessary space for the overlay and temporary buildings and, most of all, they wouldn’t cope with the flow of people, traffic, security systems and the like. In the end, they wouldn’t leave any legacy to the city because they are private, and they also cannot be closed to members for two or three years for renovation”, Paulo Goulart said.

Golf returns to the Olympic programme in 2016, after 112 years of absence – competitions last took place in the Saint Louis 1904 Games. In the end of February, the Mayor of Rio, Eduardo Paes, countersigned a draft Law that set the parameters for the construction of the Golf Course in the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The Olympic Golf Course will be the sport’s second that is open to the public, but the first official one, with eighteen holes. The other is Japeri Golfe Clube, founded in 2005 in Engenheiro Pedreira, in Japeri Municipality, which has nine holes. In order to enjoy this golf course, people can also rent sport equipment.