Matthieu Pavon may not be Mbappé or Wemby to the French, but he's helping boost golf in his home country

SAINT-QUENTIN-EN-YVELINES, France — Six years ago, in the early summer before the run-up to the Ryder Cup got particularly intense, a French professional golfer of some note told the New York Times, “If you say to people in France that you play golf, they will say: ‘No, but really. What’s your real job?’ Golf is not a good thing here. It’s for rich people and spoiled kids.”

Thursday, on the first tee of Le Golf National in the first round of the Olympic men’s golf competition, France’s Matthieu Pavon made his way across the walkway looking down on thousands of fans gathered, fist-bumping his way through the crowd like the Rock at Wrestlemania 17. Just as the frenzy started to soften a bit, a lone voice, almost immediately joined by all who could hear, intoned those familiar first words of the French national anthem, “Allons enfant de la patrie, Le jour de gloire est arrivé!”

Pavon’s opening birdie was as much a victory for the 31-year-old as it is for French golf, which now seeks to take advantage of the renewed vigor of a Ryder Cup and an Olympics in a six-year stretch, a timeframe that’s seen the country attract 200,000 new golfers. Pavon felt the crowd every step of the way.

“That was an experience I've never experienced before,” he said after finishing at even par. “Nothing before, not Torrey or Pinehurst was that big. It was a great moment, which I’m not sure I was prepared for. Too big, too many emotions, so many people screaming just your name."

Too big, indeed. Try to recall a time when Tiger Woods was serenaded with the national anthem. But then this is France, and Les Marseillais just hits different. Pavon said he had attended several other Olympic events this week, and he had heard the French fans celebrating their star athletes. This was a decidedly more powerful, and obviously more personal moment.

"I saw the Olympic atmosphere, but it's different when you're in the grandstand," he said. "You're not like the hero in the middle of the arena, you know? But that's what it was today, and you can feel how big the atmosphere is. You're surrounded by all this love, all this warm atmosphere, and it's something like absolutely crazy."

The first day of the Olympic men’s golf competition saw crowds of more than 20,000 at the home course for French golf, with flags and cheers echoing around the Albatros course for any of the 10 different nations comprising the top 10 at multiple moments throughout the afternoon. While much has been made of the grow-the-game challenges golf’s biggest events theoretically attempt to embrace, the French seemed to have found their moment and their man. Shouts of “Allez, Matthieu!” followed Pavon all the way around the course, and for Christophe Muniesa, the general director of the French Golf Federation, it was a culmination, of sorts.

“This morning is the kind of thing we dreamed of,” he said. “So satisfying. This was a confirmation, and it’s giving us a fantastic energy to go forward.”

To be fair, French golf actually has been more proactive than it probably has been given credit for. Nearly four decades ago, its organizers created Le Golf National from flat farmland, building a stadium golf facility that makes for great viewing and easily accommodates huge crowds should they ever come. At the 2018 Ryder Cup, they clearly did, and at the Olympics, where golf seems an uncertain commodity, the galleries were already packed when Victor Perez, the other French golfer in the men’s field, hit the opening tee shot at 9 a.m. local time.

“Nobody enjoys the first tee ever, but I told myself and my caddie James on the range, let's be there the full 10 minutes before and really soak it all in,” said Perez, 31, after a closing with a birdie and speaking to the media. “And it was great, having all the home support. But, at 12 years old, if somebody would have told me I would have had the opening tee shot in the Olympics, there would have been no way.”

But then that is the difference in where French golf has come in its history. The Ryder Cup in 2018 was a defining moment with its huge crowds, but it came with responsibility, said Muniesa. The organization responded to the enthusiasm of the Ryder Cup with plans to build 100 short golf practice facilities. They built 102. More than 200,000 new golfers have come to the game since. And now the mission is retaining them. The Olympics, Muniesa said, can be that catalyst. At Le Golf National, he saw a crowd that was as much golfers as those who had never seen 5-iron before, the proven spectators bringing along the newbies.

“We still have to answer the question, ‘Is golf a sport?’” he said. “But being part of the Olympic program changes things. And a day like today, with these crowds and everything moving so smoothly demonstrates how massive golf is.

“We are trying to keep building the future of golf with this momentum.”

Pavon clearly is part of that momentum. The French Open will be at Le Golf National in October with a new sponsor (FedEx) and with Pavon’s scheduled attendance, tickets and sponsorships are breaking records. As he waved on the crowd throughout his round, Pavon may not ever draw the passion of the people that an Mbappe or a Victor Wembenyama might generate, but if Thursday was any indication, no one in France is going to be wondering how he makes his living.

"Maybe it would be interesting to see the stats on how many non golfers were here today," Pavon said. "If I am part of this, it's big and I love to be that role model, let's say."