Olympic golf 2016 results: Henrik Stenson, Justin Rose may save the weekend in Rio

When the homestanding Adilson da Silva hit the first Olympics golf shot in 112 years on Thursday morning, it was the type of cool, awesome, almost tearjerking moment Olympic golf promised. Whoa, look at what this means to this guy -- to tee it up in the Olympics in his home nation. That type of theme continued for most of the first morning, when player after player from various tours -- the Sunshine Tour, Web.com Tour, Challenge Tour -- came to the tee representing their “non-traditional” golf nation and viewers heard the stories of how they never, ever expected to play on this Olympic stage. This would make their career.

That was cool. Really cool. Watching players like Rickie Fowler and Bubba Watson enjoy their time in Rio, immersing themselves into the USA Olympic team and showing up at other competitions -- it’s heartwarming. But fanfare and extraneous novelty wears off. And sometime between Thursday morning and the middle of Friday’s slogging, boring second round in the Barra de Tijuica area of the city, the Olympic golf tournament turned into a golf tournament. A boring, awful, poorly formatted golf tournament.

Coming off his 8-under 63 to start the event, Australian career journeyman Marcus Fraser seemed almost poised to run away with the gold medal before the weekend. He led for the majority of the round by between two and four shots, but his lead receded to just one over Belgium’s Thomas Pieters and two clear of Open Champion Henrik Stenson.

There’s still time to salvage dramatics and a compelling Olympic medal finale for the men’s event. No one’s playing better golf anywhere in the world right at this moment than the Big Swede, and major champion Justin Rose sits just four strokes off the pace in fourth. At 24 and a former NCAA National Champion at Illinois, Pieters is a young star in the making with immense potential for Belgium -- a gold medal could signal his arrival to the golf world.

If they’re still watching.

Some other takeaways from the first two rounds in Rio.

Right now, at this moment, it’s hard to argue that there’s anyone in the game playing better golf than Stenson. Jason Day is still probably the world’s best player, Dustin Johnson’s had a fantastic summer and it’s still hard to count against Rory McIlroy’s talent or Jordan Spieth’s ability to grind even after “down” years. But after turning in the best Sunday at a major ever (yes, I mean that) at the Open Championship, following that up with contending at the PGA, and now sitting in third alone at the Olympics -- it’s hard to discount his recent form.

Any top-5 finish will push Stenson past McIlroy in the Official World Golf Rankings, commencing Golf Take-maggedon about tight shirts and working out and press conferences and Nike and whatever. Stenson was the best player in the field to start the week, and now the biggest star remaining that can conceivably take home gold. He may be the only thing that will keep most American golf fans from flipping over to the John Deere, too.

The USA is the only country to have four players qualify for this return to the Olympics. No other country has more than two men’s players teeing it up this week. So the numbers and talent favored the Americans, but it hasn’t been a pretty first two days.

Let’s start with Fowler, who made news on Friday by committing to the Wyndham Championship, next week’s stop in Greensboro where his head may already be after coming in at the 36-hole mark in 50th place.

Fowler’s Olympics started with a four-putt triple bogey and he’s been near the bottom of the leaderboard ever since. He needed a super low round on Friday to even have a chance at a medal, but turned in only an even-par number that was good enough to move just a couple spots up the headboard. Now the uneven Fowler will switch up the schedule and play the lower-tier event in Greensboro, a stop he always skips, to try and accrue some Ryder Cup points for a team that he once seemed like a lock for.

Watson -- the other big American star in the field -- was not in as bad a shape as Fowler at the start of the day, but his opener was still not pretty. Bubba is going in the right direction, however, moving 24 spots up the board with a 4-under 67 on Friday. Matt Kuchar and Patrick Reed are in the red as well and still have a chance at a medal, although they’ll need a handful of names up ahead to come back to them or shoot some wildly low number in the weekend winds. Reed did leave his mark on the games with some exceptional American cursing at a nearby photographer or (hopefully not) patron.

Nice, Patrick.

Here’s your leaderboard at the midpoint in Rio: