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Rory McIlroy, suitably competing in the Irish green at the Olympics
Photo: MURAD SEZER / REUTERS
The Olympic golf competition in Tokyo is first and foremost characterized by an impressive absence list.
Dustin Johnson, the current top dog from the USA, canceled early, superstar Tiger Woods is just as absent as Spain's Sergio Garcia or Australia's Adam Scott.
Bryson DeChambeu and Jon Rahm, two of the top stars, actually wanted to take part, but were temporarily thrown out of the race by positive corona tests.
So, at Kasumigaseki Country Club, attention is turning to the remaining biggest name in the field, and that is Rory McIlroy. The 32-year-old is not only interested in his undisputed successes. McIlroy, the Northern Irishman, is not competing for Great Britain in Tokyo, but under the Irish flag. There are so many delicate things on the Northern Ireland question that even such a decision can lead to confusion.
McIlroy was born in Holywood, Northern Ireland in 1989, but grew up largely in Catholic Ireland, he has always been a wanderer between the two worlds in a way, in 2016 he told the Daily Mail that he actually felt "more British than Irish", but even then he said that he could not really justify exactly why that was so.
He competed for Ireland as an amateur and then as a professional for Northern Ireland.
He was considered a golf prodigy early on
To call McIlroy a superstar on the British Isles would probably be an understatement.
By the age of 25 he had already won four major tournaments, which puts him in line with the monuments Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus.
He was considered a golf prodigy at an early age, at least since he was 9 years old when he chipped golf balls into a washing machine on Northern Irish television.
He made his first hole-in-one when he was ten.
However, it is also true that McIlroy has not had any success at the four major tournaments since 2014.
It has had little effect on his aura.
It is undisputed that he still delivers top performances.
At the US Open he ended up in seventh place this year, and in the Masters last year he was fifth.
It should now be more at the Olympic Games.
Preferably a medal.
For Ireland.
"I suspect I'll upset some people with this decision, but I hope the majority will understand," McIlroy had said before the Rio Games.
Even then he wanted to compete for Ireland, but because of the rampant Zika virus, he had to cancel his participation at short notice.
At that time he still called the Olympic tournament "irrelevant", but he has now changed his mind.
Now the five-time Ryder Cup winner is celebrating his Olympic premiere - in the Irish team at the side of his Dublin colleague Shane Lowry, like McIlroy a real medal contender.
The best prospects for medals
Lowry won the British Open in 2019, the year it was held in Northern Ireland. The cheering of the Catholic Northern Irish for the Irish Lowry was the big topic at the time. The Northern Ireland question is still a raw egg, even if the armed events are a thing of the past. Brexit did its part.
McIlroy has always tried to take the matter out of the subject, to pretend this Olympic golf tournament is a tournament like any other.
With the sentence: "I'm not a particularly patriotic guy", however, he didn't just make friends in a region where nationalism is still so important.
When he says that at the Olympic Games, too, his main aim is to promote "the good in the game" instead of serving a country, he tries not to provide any points of attack on either side.
After the third round, McIlroy is in fifth place with eleven strokes under par, with the best prospects for the podium within striking distance of the leading Xander Schauffele from the USA, who has 14 strokes under par.
Lowry is ninth with ten strokes under par, and he can also look up before the final round.
Placed directly in front of McIlroy, however, is Paul Casey. Paul Casey from Cheltenham in England, Great Britain.
