Las Vegas native Jerry Foltz has eye out for giant rats at Olympic golf

It was Friday, opening night of the Olympics, and Jerry Foltz was speaking by telephone from England. He was waiting for the opening ceremonies to begin on the telly. He was chatting about his childhood home near Western High School, which he graduated from in 1980, when he was asked about the 150-pound rats that roam the rough on the Olympic golf course in Barra da Tijuca.

As part of his duties with the Golf Channel, Foltz, who will turn 54 during the Olympics, will be roaming fairways and the areas around the rough during the women’s tournament next week. (The men’s event begins Thursday.)

“They’re called capybaras,” Foltz said.

Perhaps capybaras sounds less disconcerting than 150-pound rats. Not all capybaras grow to be 150 pounds and are fond of Titleists and Maxflis. That was giving Jerry Foltz solace, I think.

“They chew down on the grass at night,” Mark Johnson, the PGA Tour’s director of international agronomy, was quoted in news reports. “There are about 30 to 40 of them inside the course perimeter, but they live here and we play golf here, we co-exist.”

I found a video of a giant capybara on YouTube. A guy was petting it. It seemed docile. A commenter said “That is the most majestic creature I have ever seen. I shall ride him to battle.”

The National Post in Canada said there also are three-toed sloths, monkeys, boa constrictors, caimans and a small crocodile on the Olympic golf course. They are said to frequent holes 2, 3, 5 and 9.

And then there’s the omnipotent Zika virus, and the omnipotent stuff floating in the water on the rowing lake back in Rio.

“It’s an ecological thing, but in Brazil, that’s sort of an oxymoron,” Foltz said. “For 17 days, it will look like the safest place on Earth. It’ll make for great TV.”

Although the presence of a 150-pound rat might discourage the big hitters from going for the green on certain holes, the Olympic golf tournament has other issues.

This is the first time golf has been an Olympic sport since 1904, and many famous golf people said wonderful things about its return.

“The gold medal is going to be the biggest prize in golf,” Jack Nicklaus said unabashedly and apparently with the straightest of faces.

But it might have been a bigger prize if the good golfers had not started pulling out as if the Olympics were an early morning tee time at the local muni.

Jason Day, Dustin Johnson, Jordan Spieth, Rory McIlroy and former UNLV standout Adam Scott bailed on Brazil. Even Louis Oosthuizen pulled out, leaving Henrik Stenson of Sweden and Masters champ Danny Willett of England to play for the gold, and American Bubba Watson to see if he can drive one beyond the green and into the domicile of 150-pound rats.

Also, somebody needs to alert Matt Kuchar about the format. Eight days before the start of the tournament, Kuchar thought it was a team competition instead of stroke play.

The field is much stronger on the women’s side, where Lydia Ko of New Zealand, Brooke Henderson of Canada and former Bishop Gorman star Inbee Park of South Korea will play; they are ranked first, third and fifth in the world.

Foltz prefaced his remarks by saying he was part of the broadcast team, so there was a line that had to be drawn in the sand — which is appropriate, because the Olympic golf course was built on a sand quarry near saltwater marshes and lagoons and 150-pound rats known as capybaras.

“Men’s golf has four gold-medal events, women’s golf has five,” Foltz said in reference to the majors, and of Rory McIlroy’s statement that instead of playing Olympic golf, or even watching it on TV, he instead would be watching “track and field, swimming, diving — the stuff that matters.”

In other words, Jack may have been a little disingenuous about the size of the prize.

Foltz said he hopes the IOC is serious about growing the game, which supposedly is why golf was reinstated to the Olympics, because golf is a game that needs growing these days. But he gets what McIlroy was saying.

“In my mind, there’s a delineation between golf and the (Olympic) sports we grew up with. It’s not the decathlon or the 200 meters or the butterfly,” Foltz said, adding that Olympic golf isn’t comparable to Franz Klammer flying down a downhill course in Austria, which Foltz so vividly remembers watching on TV in a hotel room in Disneyland when he was a youngster.

It’s not about the gold medal in golf, as it is in alpine skiing. It’s more about the green jacket or the Claret Jug.

“But I do think one of the true charms in athletics is standing there on the platform with a gold medal draped around your neck,” Foltz said. “When they play your national anthem, that’s the ultimate payoff.”

For the first time in more than a century, that is an experience two golfers will have in Rio, whether the game grows or it doesn’t, regardless of who shows up or doesn’t.

It’s not the decathlon or the 200 meters or the butterfly or even team handball. But maybe it’ll still be worth watching, even if the 150-pound rats decide to lie low.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski