WORLD NUMBER THREE Rory McIlroy concedes he remains unconvinced that golf has a long-term future at the Olympic Games.
McIlroy confirmed this week that he would skip the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth, the European Tour’s flagship event that he won in 2014, in order to maintain his fitness ahead of Rio 2016, but other big names in the sport have opted out of competing.
Former world number one pair Adam Scott and Vijay Singh have withdrawn, while former Open champion Louis Oosthuizen is also skipping the Games.
McIlroy says that the passion of Irish team captain Paul McGinley is a big factor in his commitment to the event, as well as picking up a gold medal while the chance is there.
“It’s obviously being played in Rio this year and it’s being played in Tokyo in 2020,” he said. “I’m not sure if we’re going to have another opportunity to win a gold medal after that depending on what happens.”
He added: “Paul’s a very close friend of mine and I feel like if I didn’t play, I would let him down big time.
“So that’s why I want to go down and give it my best shot. It’s a week.
“I’m going to get all my shots next week. The doctor’s on site at The PLAYERS, get my shots for Zika, and get my shots for everything else that I need to.
“I’ll go play four rounds really competitively and try and win a gold medal.
“And if you do, I don’t know how that will stack up against the other things that I’ve done in my career now, but maybe I might look back in 20 years’ time and a gold medal might be one of my crowning achievements in the game, you never know.
“It’s an opportunity to do something that you’ve never done before.”
