Rory sees through Rio crazy golf
A COUPLE of years ago, I visited the course which would stage the Olympic golf tournament. It was then under construction, being prised, inch by inch, from the swamp of a nature reserve. The man in charge was helpful. ‘Do many Brazilians play golf?’ I asked. ‘They can’t afford to,’ he said. ‘But is there much interest in the game?’ ‘Not a lot,’ he replied. ‘Will it be used after the Games?’ ‘I shouldn’t think so,’ he said.
I thought of that gentleman last week, when Rory McIlroy was the target of another censorious bout of fingerwagging for declining to play in the Olympics.
For Rory knows, as we all know, that golf owes its place in the Games to American television.
It is the game to which Joe Six-pack can relate. And while the rest of the world clamours for Usain Bolt, NBC Sport needs to satisfy Joe. McIlroy expressed the situation perfectly. ‘Most athletes dream of competing in the Olympics. We dream of Claret Jugs and Green Jackets,’ he said. When they come to catalogue the multi-million-dollar blunders that crippled the Rio Olympics, the scandal of that unwanted golf course should come high on their list.
Rory is well out of it.