Rory McIlroy said he “resents the Olympics” for putting him in an uncomfortable position of having to choose between representing two flags with which he feels no connection, according to the Independent in Ireland.
When golf was readded to the Olympics for the Rio Games, McIlroy knew that if he was going to play, he couldn’t represent his native Northern Ireland, which does not field an Olympic team separate from Great Britain.
McIlroy, the world No. 2 with four major titles, was left to choose between representing Ireland and Great Britain.
“All of a sudden it put me in a position where I had to question who I am,” McIlroy said, according to Sunday’s report. “Who am I? Where am I from? Where do my loyalties lie? Who am I going to play for? Who do I not want to piss off the most? I started to resent it. And I do. I resent the Olympic Games because of the position it put me in -- that’s my felling towards it -- and whether that’s right or wrong, it’s how I feel.”
In June 2014, McIlroy announced he would represent Ireland if he played at the Rio Olympics. He had previously played for Ireland at the World Cup of Golf in 2009 and 2011.
“Thinking about all the times that I played as an amateur for Ireland and as a boy and everything, I think for me it’s the right decision to play for Ireland in 2016,” McIlroy reportedly said then.
Two years later, and less than two months before the Olympics, McIlroy announced he would skip the Olympics due to Zika virus concerns.
In the months that followed, McIlroy hinted that other reasons went into his decision, perhaps primarily -- that he didn’t consider Olympic golf that prestigious. Or because of the politics concerning which country he would represent.
McIlroy delved into the latter in Sunday’s report, recalling a text conversation with Brit Justin Rose, who won the first Olympic men’s golf title in 112 years in August.
After McIlroy sent Rose a congratulatory message, Rose said all the golfers in Rio wanted to know if McIlroy felt like he missed out by skipping the Olympics.
“I said; ‘Justin, if I had been on the podium [listening] to the Irish national anthem as that flag went up, or the British national anthem as that flag went up, I would have felt uncomfortable either way,’” McIlroy said, according to the newspaper. “I don’t know the words to either anthem; I don’t feel a connection to either flag; I don’t want to be about flags; I’ve tried to stay away from that.”
McIlroy said he was proven wrong about golf’s place in the Olympics in the week after the Rio Games. But he refrained from committing to the Tokyo Olympics.
“The participation in the Olympics for me, it’s just a little more complicated I feel for me than some other people from where I’m from and the whole politics of the thing,” McIlroy said in October. “It’s a difficult subject for me.
“Four years’ time is a long ways away, so we’ll see what happens. Right now, I’ll concentrate on the 16 majors that we have between now and then and try to get a few more of those and go from there.”
