Hideki Matsuyama Calls Olympic Golf WD "Heart Wrenching"
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At least Japan's hope for a gold medalist in men's golf has an understandable excuse he's been telegraphing for a while: bad reactions to bug bites.
Doug Ferguson's report on Hideki Matsuyama pulling out of the Olympics says Matsuyama notified the Japanese press contingent after his final round in the WGC Bridgestone.
Golfweek has compiled a list of the WD's and their reasoning.
This is the last week of Olympic golf qualifying. Here is the men's field if it were held today, with the reserve list here.
Here is the women's field, with the reserve list here.
While I certainly understand some of the player concerns, as someone attending the games in Rio and not subject to some of the secure forms of transportation that players will enjoy, I can't find much faul at this point with Tommy Conlon's take in the Independent.
The rich men of world sport are saying no to the Olympics and withdrawing deeper into their air-conditioned ivory towers. The poor of world sport will be there, Zika or no Zika.
McIlroy, McDowell, Lowry; Adam Scott, Charl Schwartzel, Louis Oosthuizen, Branden Grace, Vijay Singh and Jason Day; male golfers are apparently susceptible to falling pregnant in tropical climes. So having sought the best advice available on these pressing family planning matters, they’ve decided to use the Billings method and abstain from Rio altogether.
What a shower of wusses. Thousands of athletes have visited Brazil over the last two years to compete in various test events and not one that we know of has contracted the Zika virus.
**Vanessa Barbara with a depressing NY Times piece for those going to Rio on the state of preparations for the 2016 Olympic Games. Though I took it with a grain of salt since the golf course was built on a property that had been pilfered and the two "big" courses couldn't host modern golf.
Somebody will profit from the Games, but it won’t be the majority of Rio’s population. Eighty percent of the investments were made in the wealthy Barra da Tijuca neighborhood, known as Rio’s Miami. An Olympic golf course was built there, inside an Area of Environmental Protection. The city already has two big golf courses, and very few Brazilians play golf.
