5 storylines to watch in the 2020 PGA Tour season

5. The race to Tokyo

When it was announced that golf would be returning to the Olympics in 2016 for the first time in more than a century, the news was met with a collective yawn by many of the world’s best players.

Dustin Johnson, Rory McIlroy and Jordan Spieth were just some of the top-ranked players who pulled out of the event in Rio de Janeiro, citing concerns over the Zika virus. The fact that the Olympics isn’t a major, doesn’t count as a PGA Tour victory and doesn’t award prize money probably didn’t help attract top talent, either.

Despite the absence of some of the game’s best, the event in Rio still proved to be a success. Justin Rose didn’t waste any opportunity to show off the gold medal he won. Rickie Fowler was so proud of representing the United States that he got the Olympic logo tattooed on his arm.

In 2020, players won’t have a medical excuse for missing the event. Combined with how well the players who actually went spoke of their experience, the second time around will surely be a can’t-miss event.

But that doesn’t mean all of the game’s best players will be in Tokyo next summer. The field will consist of the top-15 in the world rankings, with no more than four players from each country. Taking the rankings as they stand right now, the American team would consist of Brooks Koepka, Johnson, Justin Thomas and Patrick Cantlay. That means that Tiger Woods won’t be there. Neither would Xander Schauffele, Bryson DeChambeau, Fowler or Matt Kuchar, the bronze medalist from Rio.

The race to get on the highly-competitive American team will be a subplot at every PGA Tour event between now and the summer. This time around, there won’t be a mass exodus of players using any excuse they can find to stay home.