"Google 'Olympics' and 'Rogge' and the search engine spits out pages of the kind of bad press golf has so successfully avoided."

Rex Hoggard becomes the first of hopefully many who write off the ridiculous quest for golf in the Olympics.

In the mean time, golf’s powers may want to convince the game’s rank and file of the benefits of golf in the Olympics.

“Golf may already have enough big events with the PGA Tour and the majors and the European Tour and the Ryder Cup,” Stewart Cink said. “I’m just not sold.”

The Tour season begins and ends with the majors, despite the best efforts of FedEx or Finchem. Toss in the Ryder Cup, which hasn’t smiled on the New World side for a generation, and Presidents Cup, which hasn’t smiled on the rest of Atlas over a similar news cycle, and you have a dance card on the busy side of hectic.

“We play over 36 events a year. How many times do you see ice skating, figure skating, speed skating, track and field on TV in a year?” Jason Gore asked. “We get a chance to show our stuff every week.”

The timing of the games would probably be the biggest hurdle faced by Olympic organizers considering this year’s games get underway on the heels of the year’s final major and just before the FedEx Cup playoffs in August.

“If it was in China or some place right in the middle of the season, I’m not sure I’d go play in it,” Cink said.

Golf’s Olympic trump card is Tiger Woods, perhaps the most marketable athlete of his generation. But in 2016 Woods will be 40 years old, maybe four or five Grand Slam keepsakes past Jack Nicklaus on the all-time list and, by all current accounts, working on his fifth swing change and 10 more majors. However, nowhere on the bedroom wall in the childhood home in Cypress, Calif., did Woods hang Greg Louganis’ gold medal totals.

“If you spend a lot of time and resources getting golf into the Olympics and suddenly one or two players don’t play . . . I don’t know. There are a lot of really big tournaments already. Would the Olympics become a major right away?” Cink asked.

Gaining a spot in the Olympic Games is seen by many as the best way to grow the game. But at what cost?

Google “Olympics” and “Rogge” and the search engine spits out pages of the kind of bad press golf has so successfully avoided.