Now that the Olympics are over, let’s get to the question on everyone’s minds:

When will golf be in the Olympics?

But before we discuss that, let me share some background.

I grew up in rural Calhoun County, Iowa, and my farmer grandparents every year would buy me and my sister junior memberships at Twin Lakes Golf Course. They golfed and we golfed, but our mom and stepfather didn’t golf.

This was a decent nine-hole course on the south side of South Twin Lake. You could be anybody and play there. The benches were sponsored by Rockwell City businesses ranging from lawyers to auto mechanics. Most of the duffers at the clubhouse would drink light beer or hard liquor. Everyone was either a farmer, a former farmer or related to a farmer. It was a farm town.

There was little or no presumption, so I grew up without any idea that golf was a sport for the affluent. Though I liked to play golf and participated on the high school team, I was a teenager, so I wasn’t about to spend hours watching golf on television.

Then I entered the big world. What? Golf is for the rich? Naw. What? Some parts of the country don’t have little, cheapo courses like in the rural Midwest? Naw. Even Fort Dodge — which to me was a big town — had Sunkissed Meadows. What? The affuent people at these courses for rich people are arrogant? Sheesh. This sport is different than I had thought.

It occurred to me that golf needs to learn a lesson from the Midwest, and since then I revel in playing golf courses that lack pretense. I view lack of maintenance as adding challenge to a round. When I worked at The Tribune in Ames, Iowa, my co-workers and I often played either the nine-hole municipal course in town or the public nine-hole Oaks Golf Course north of town.

It was while I was working in Ames that the Wall Street Journal, on April 13, 2000, produced a story on golf, shortly after The Masters. It said the phenom Tiger Woods had hooked more people into watching golf but hadn’t boosted the number of people playing golf. The story’s writer visited places around the country but not the Midwest. I e-mailed a letter to the editor, and on April 26, the Wall Street Journal published it:

Headline: “Workers of the World, Unite on the 19th Hole!”

“It seems the rest of the golfing world is unlike Iowa and the Midwest. Your April 13 page-one story seems to chronicle what golf is like in areas of the country where only the wealthy have money to play, where golf courses are built for only the affluent. It describes how today’s courses attract only avid golfers and discourage beginners.

“Not so here in Iowa, where golfing is a blue-collar sport. On a nice day, you can see farmers, grocers, bikers, bankers, kids and retirees on the same course. Small towns with nine-hole courses dot the map. Medium towns with affordable 18-holers are common, too. We have our ritzy courses, also. But when I lived in Houston, there were only ritzy courses. It was clearly a sport for the rich.

“Before the courses officially open, my co-workers and I can play the public course north of Ames for $5. During the season, it costs $10. This universal availability to the game was why Iowans seemed so knowledgeable and enthusiastic about golf when the 1999 U.S. Senior Open was held in Des Moines. If the bigwigs of golf want to reach the 41 million Americans who say they want to play, they should study the sport in Iowa.

“Tim Engstrom, Ames, Iowa”

Indeed, golf legend Arnold Palmer was impressed with Iowans’ love for golf, so he helped central Iowa get a spot on the senior tour. It is the Principal Charity Classic, founded in 2001 as the Allianz Championship. I thought golf was finally seeing the light. Maybe by coming to Iowa, some of the farmer karma would rub off on the poobahs of the sport, and they would see what golf needed for growth.

My man Arnold surely understood this. Because he grew up learning at a nine-hole course in Latrobe, Pa., maybe he grasped my point. Maybe he had read my letter in the Wall Street Journal and agreed.

Of course, a good step in reaching out to the common folks was to get into the Olympics. People root for sports they don’t normally follow during the Olympics.

In September 2005, I photographed Arnold Palmer for the Daily Record in Ellensburg, Wash. He played nine holes at an 18-hole golf course his company designed for Suncadia Resort near Roslyn, Wash. Afterward, he took questions from reporters.

I asked him: “Golf is played around much of the world. Do you think golf will ever be in the Olympics?”

Arnie didn’t quite know what to say, uttering a few ums and uhs. Then he said if golf were in the Olympics, it would have to be Ryder Cup-style of play — teams, not individuals. Here comes the sad part: He said the existence of the Ryder Cup and the President’s Cup makes if difficult for golf’s leaders to bring it to the Olympics.

Well, I wasn’t disappointed in Arnold. He wisely passed the buck to golf’s leaders.

From Arnie’s comment, it felt like the leaders of the sport — whoever they are — are the ones who don’t get it. My guess is they probably have so much money they would never frequent little nine-hole clubs like Twin Lakes Golf Course. They would never see the potential of growing the sport of golf in other parts of the country la the unpretentious Midwest style.

Oh well. At least we Midwesterners know we have something special when it comes to golf.

Tribune Managing Editor Tim Engstrom’s column appears every Tuesday.