In a few days’ time at Le Golf National outside Paris, another Olympic tournament gets underway. Inevitably as these things go, there will be much debate about whether it should happen at all.

Golf, the argument goes in some circles, does not belong at the Olympic Games (although it is not widely known that the sport was in the Games of 1900 and 1904, before disappearing until 2012).

It’s an argument that troubles me every single time.

Golf is way too good a game, too big a game, to decline the opportunity of being in the Olympics, the biggest festival of sport that there is.

I’ll tell you why. Golf at the Olympics is the greatest free kick for the sport that has ever come our way. It projects the game via television to a much wider audience than golf is accustomed to. The television numbers are amazing. The women, for instance, will play to more eyeballs than they ever see at a regular tour event.

Because it’s the Olympics.

Golf is a popular sport in much of the world, but – and this may be a broad brush – it has a habit of looking inward. There is a view that it has a history of talking to itself a lot, preaching to the converted. So here is the opportunity to get outside the tent and promote a sport that has changed its bent immeasurably in recent years, become more inclusive, recognized what it needed to do to fit with society’s demands.

Another win from Olympic golf is funding. In pragmatic terms, it gives Golf Australia a much better argument for funding of High Performance programs by government. Especially if we could win medals. Golf is already way behind many sports in the priority list for government funding. To keep up with the rest of the world, we need to do something about this, and the Olympics is the vehicle.

Then there are the athletes. Olympic participation gives great athletes the opportunity to represent their country on the biggest stage. Don’t try to tell me that they don’t care. Hannah Green, who’ll play in Paris, recently said the Olympics were her No. 1 priority for the year and Greeny is not one to fudge things.

So what do we say to the critics?

Well, there’s the format, a sore point. Four rounds of stroke, as it happens, was an entry-level claim by the Swiss-based International Golf Federation which runs the Olympic golf. At the Tokyo Games I learned that the IGF, run by an Australian executive director in Antony Scanlon, wanted a simple format that non-golf people could understand.

Yes, a mixed format in teams would be nice. The IGF very likely understands that a new format might be good. But their attitude is to get the thing up and running first, and I understand that.

But it’s not the biggest thing in the sport? Well, get over it. Olympic basketball is not the biggest thing in that sport either, and the same for football and tennis. But you don’t see those sports turning away the Olympic Games.

But the majors are bigger? Get over that, too. Golf needs to make the adjustment; to understand that every fourth year, there is another major. It has not reached that point yet, as proven when Xander Schauffele won the PGA Championship recently, when a lot was made of it being his first ‘major’ win.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we acknowledged that in fact, he won an Olympic gold medal in 2021 in Tokyo, three years earlier? Which to me, is a pretty big deal. The other major.

Paris, bring it on. Citius, altius, fortius.