As the 2016 Rio Summer Games approached and golf was designated an Olympic sport for the first time since 1904, the man known as the father of the game in Brazil was celebrated anew.

Brazil had won five World Cup soccer championships and produced international road racing and tennis champions, but golf had largely remained a niche sport in the country, reserved for wealthy businessmen and expatriates.

But when the Reserva Marapendi Golf Course was built for the Olympics in western Rio, later to be converted into a public course in the hope that it could propel Brazilian golf toward a bright future, the exploits of Mario Gonzalez, who died Monday in Rio at 96, were remembered and retold.

Gonzalez won the Brazil Open eight times and was in contention for the British Open championship in 1948 while an amateur. In 1941, at 19, he had taken on Bobby Jones — the winner of golf’s original Grand Slam (the United States and British opens and two amateur tournaments) in 1930 and the co-founder of Augusta National, home of the Masters, in 1934 — and played him to a draw in an exhibition match.