The 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil will feature golf for the first time. The games are scheduled to be held August 5-21, 2016.

Those dates will create scheduling problems for the PGA Tour. The PGA Championship, which is normally scheduled for the second week in August, will conflict with those dates.

Several of the world’s top golfers are expected to compete for their country in the Olympics and would not be available for the final major of the year.

PGA of America President, Ted Bishop mentioned the problem on Golf Channel’s Morning Drive on Tuesday, August 6. He said officials are discussing possible schedule changes to the 2016 schedule.

One possibility would be the compression of an already tight PGA Tour schedule to allow the PGA Championship to be held in late July rather than its normal August time slot.

That could also mean that the U.S. Open and the Open Championships may be affected and earlier time slots would be required.

The Masters would certainly not want to move its annual time slot at the beginning of April. It heralds the beginning of spring in most of the United States and an earlier time would bring uncertain weather and shorter days into the conversation.

The U.S. Open is historically held in the middle of June with the final round falling on Father’s Day each year. The USGA has used the Father’s Day connection to tout the bonding of fathers and their children on the golf course.

The 2016 Open Championship is set to be held at Troon and usually is held near the middle of July.

If the 2016 PGA Championship is to be moved to late July prior to the start of the 2016 Olympics in Brazil, it would seem almost certain that the Open Championship would need to move to a time slot one or two weeks earlier than its normal time.

That would force a severe compression of the golf schedule and three major championships, the U.S. Open, the Open Championship and the PGA Championship would all be played within a six-week time frame.

Also coming into play is the WGC-Bridgestone and the RBC Canadian Open that are both played between the Open Championship and the PGA Championship.

Something is going to have to give. Tournaments will need to be moved up in the scheduling and others will be forced to get moved to the back of the line at the end of the year when football dominates big screen televisions across the land.

Not everyone is going to be happy with the results when they are made official. Players will want more time between majors. The U.S. Open, Open Championship and the PGA Championship will not be excited about giving up there normal time slots for rescheduling.

Cheer up guys, it will only be for one year and then golf officials will have another four years to figure it out the next time the Olympics roll around.