29 Jun 2021 | Professional golf |
Lee and Green join Olympic qualifiers
by Martin Blake
Minjee Lee, Hannah Green, Marc Leishman and Cameron Smith are the four Australians to qualify for the Tokyo Olympic Games golf tournament.
Lee (world ranked 14th) and Green (15) were confirmed as the top women qualifiers when the world rankings were released this morning, joining Leishman and Smith who qualified last Monday.
The final teams will be announced inside the next week after a nomination process is completed.
Perth’s Lee, who finished tied-seventh in the Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games when golf made its return to the Games after a century’s absence, is the only one of the four who has been an Olympian previously.
Green is back in Australia in quarantine, having a planned break from tournament golf so that she is rested up for Tokyo.
The men’s and women’s fields at next month’s Olympics both have 60-player fields taken off the world rankings, with the top 15 on the rankings all given a spot up to a limit of four players per country.
In the women’s field, for instance, South Korea (Jin Young Ko, Inbee Park, Sei Young Kim and Hyo-Joo Kim) has four competitors as does the United States (Nelly and Jessica Korda, Danielle Kang and Lexi Thompson).
All of the top women will compete in Tokyo while on the men’s side, there have been a few withdrawals including Dustin Johnson, Adam Scott, Louis Oosthuizen and Tyrrell Hatton.
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