The Golf Digest headline reads: Debate on Olympic golf heats up.

While that seems like something that could’ve filled the pages as recently as a decade ago, this one was published in the January 1993 issue.

“Golf had entered the muddy waters of Olympic politics,” the piece from Peter McCleery read. “How golf will emerge from the fray is Topic A among the game’s cognoscenti entering 1993.”

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Later that month, however, talks were called off. But how the discussion got to that point was interesting.

The 1996 Summer Games were held in Atlanta. Billy Payne, long before he was chairman of Augusta National and even before he was a member at the club, was the head of the Atlanta Games organizing committee. It was his desire to bring golf back into the Olympics. So he worked with Augusta National chairman Jack Stephens and the two agreed that Augusta National would be the perfect place to host the event.

The idea, seemingly a no-brainer, was met with skepticism.

This excerpt is taken directly from the January 1993 article: Aside from the infighting and horse-trading inevitable in such a process, the most distasteful element of Olympic golf to many is the involvement of professionals in the games. Under the guise of getting the best athletes, the Olympics long ago abandoned the amateur ideal—if there were any doubters, they need only look to the NBA “Dream Team” of the ’92 Olympics. Golf in the Olympics, if it happens at all, will clearly involve professionals playing for God, country and the gold medal. Among the more articulate critics of this movement is Don Ohlmeyer, the independent TV producer who worked on five Olympic Games for ABC. “I love the Olympics, but I’m not a fan of what the IOC is doing,” he says. “What I see them doing is destroying the character of the Olympics. I’d rather see Tiger Woods in the Olympics than a professional golfer. I think the IOC is making a tremendous mistake, putting people in the Olympics for whom the Olympics is not that important. Because what they have done is taken away that mystique that people are doing something because they love it, and that this is the greatest moment of their lives.”

Remember, this was January 1993, months before a 17-year-old Woods would win his third straight U.S. Junior title.

“Golf is already a major international sport seen on TV each week by millions and millions of people,” said PGA Tour commissioner Deane Beman in 1993. “It’s not necessary to promote professional golf internationally. I’ve felt for years and consistently taken the position that it would do more for golf with amateurs in the Olympics. For amateur golfers around the world to aspire to play in the Olympics would be a great thing. Not that this [the Atlanta Olympics with pros] won’t be.”

LPGA commissioner Charlie Mechem was more bullish on the concept, saying that he believed the opportunity to show his athletes competing on the same stage as the men in front of a global audience that can reach four billion viewers was something worth pursuing.

Davis Love III and Fred Couples, two of the leading American players at the time, although friends, were on different sides of the issue. Love noted that golf already had the Ryder Cup, Walker Cup and World Cup as opportunities for a golfer to represent their country and thought the idea of having professional basketball players competing was a bad look.

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Couples, indicating he’d love to participate, bluntly said, “some guys aren’t going to want to change their schedules, but when it comes down to it, they’ll do it.”

The format was already thought to be 72 holes of stroke play, just as it is now. And Stephens said he was convinced that Augusta National, which is closed during the summer and open during the winter, would be in great shape for a two-week stretch in July and August 1996.

But it was all for not. Payne announced in late January 1993 that his office was withdrawing the proposal for golf to return three years later.

Of course, it wasn’t until 2009 when golf was approved to return for the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio after a 112-year hiatus. This year men’s competition will be played Aug. 1-4, with the women following Aug. 7-10 at Le Golf National outside Paris.

RELATED: How Le Golf National will play much differently than it did for the 2018 Ryder Cup

This article was originally published on golfdigest.com