Rory McIlroy won’t be the last to decide Rio not worth the hassle

A: This is where it really gets ramped up. My next five events, pending scheduling changes, are all very, very - either Majors, the Olympics, World Golf Championship. I mean, it just feels like the first half of the year is done. This is kind of how we can start to finish off the year strong into the Ryder Cup...

Q: Jordan, you mentioned earlier talking about the Olympics. Just walk us through your thought process. There’s a lot of concerns with Zika and everything else and the infrastructure down there. Why have you made the decision to for sure go?

A: You’re putting words into my mouth, sir, but right now I am very - I said pending scheduling changes earlier. I’m not sure where I’ll play next, even after this week. I mean, you just never know.

Transcript from Jordan Spieth’s pre-tournament press conference at Oakmont last week

It’s reasonable to assume that Rory McIlroy won’t be the last golfer to withdraw from the Olympics. It will be a surprise too if he isn’t followed by assorted cyclists, tennis players, soccer players and more. Simply put, the Zika virus has provided an out for any and all sportspeople worldwide who have bigger fish to fry.

It will be noted that the athletes for whom an Olympic medal - or even just a personal best at the games - is the be-all, end-all quadrennial target in their sport have shown no hint or wish of giving Rio a miss in August. McIlroy, by contrast, is the sixth golfer. All of them, by the by, are male. No surprises there - an Olympic medal with its attendant exposure and sponsorship possiblities holds greater caché in the women's game.

But on the men's side of things, this was always the problem with golf edging its way back into the Olympics. It wasn't wanted, it wasn't needed, it was done for all the wrong reasons. They said it was to grow the game when what they meant was to expand the market for Nike Golf, TaylorMade, Callaway and the rest. Golf professionals aren't working in salt mines but you'll find they feel they do plenty of singing for their supper already.

With McIlroy gone, attention will inevitably turn to Spieth, Jason Day and the other players at the elite end of the game. For all the broader efforts to gin up enthusiasm for the concept, there is no denying the overwhelming apathy towards it in the pro ranks. By their recent wavering, it won't be earth-shattering if and when we hear that Spieth and Day have thought better of it as well.

The reason it’s important that the Olympics be the pinnacle of any sport that appears on the schedule is because it’s never good for anyone to have athletes feel like they’re doing you a favour by just turning up. Golfers are creatures of habit, all the more so when it comes to the late summer. By plonking itself down in the middle of August and compacting the major season - in a Ryder Cup year, to boot - the strength of the draw of the games was always going to be tested.

Think about it this way. Had McIlroy decided to go to Rio, he would have stood on the first tee having gone through four years of constant complications to get there. From existential crises to do with identity and nationality to more prosaic practicalities like basic scheduling and travelling to, finally, a threat - however minuscule - to the future health of his family. Golf at the Olympics has been nothing but a constant pebble in Rory McIlroy’s custom-made Nike Rors golf shoes.

There isn’t a pro golfer alive who wouldn’t happily wade through all of that and more to get to play in a major. But it’s a lot to endure for the Olympics and it’s no surprise that one by one, they’re deciding it’s just not worth the hassle.

McIlroy will take a bit of online scouring for his late decision but he owes Irish golf nothing at this stage and shouldn’t give it a second thought. He has single-handedly revived the Irish Open and secured its future, which will be a far more enduring legacy than a gold medal in Rio could ever have been. Any razzing he takes on social media says more about the razzers than the razzee.

As for the Irish team now, it looks certain to be Shane Lowry plus one. Ordinarily, Graeme McDowell would be that one but with his wife set to give birth the week after Rio, it's not thought likely that he will make the trip. All of which would leave Pádraig Harrington as the next man in.

Pádraig Harrington, Olympic champion? Stranger things have happened.