Search For Rory's Lost BBC Award Begins
/The shock phase has flown right by the grieving stage to the all important nationality phase, reports Harriet Crawford in the wake of Rory McIlroy's lost BBC Sports Personality Of The Year Award.
Crawford writes:
Matt Jones, one of the teaching professionals at Lough Erne Golf Club, did not think nationality was to blame for McIlroy's second place: "I'm English myself living over here and I don't think it was down to him being from Northern Ireland that stopped him winning."
But he did decide he is more Irish than British.
In the buried lede of the year...Peter Millar lives!
Peter Millar, a member of Holywood Golf Club, said that McIlroy could still win in the future.
"I just don't know why he didn't win over people more. But he is more focused on playing golf than winning personality prizes - I suppose it would be another nice thing to win but he has plenty of opportunities to win; he's young."
**Oliver Brown in the Telegraph says this is a sign of golf's place in the culture, not people's view that Rory is...a tax dodger!? I didn't see that one coming...
The sheer scale of his shock defeat hints that there is something deeper at play, though. It is not as if we can hold McIlroy’s tax-exile status, which he enjoys out in his gilded mansion in West Palm Beach, against him, when Hamilton has deftly avoided contributions to the public purse since the age of 22 by claiming residence in Switzerland and Monaco.
No, we must conclude that what sabotaged McIlroy’s credentials was golf itself. Who in the sport was championing his cause to win with the same fervour that the world of dressage propelled Charlotte Dujardin to a surprising fourth place? And there is a more fundamental problem. For as McIlroy himself admitted on the Today programme yesterday, the grassroots game is dying: “Gone are the days that you can spend five or six hours on the golf course. Nowadays it’s hard to leave your phone [for that time], everything’s so instant.” The remedy, he said, could well be to “speed the game up”. Sadly, for all McIlroy’s wondrous achievements, many people of his age just cannot seem to link the words “golf” and “personality”.
