Hopefully Jordan Spieth will as with an increasingly depleted field absent of most of the top players, he surely must have a good shot of winning Gold.

Any reason why golfers are withdrawing because of the Zika virus but Tennis players aren't?

assuming they are giving zika as a genuine reason i would assume there will be alot more mosquitos in and around a golf course than a tennis court

Do think the Scottish open is going to have to move dates since Wimbledon moved a couple of years ago.

When I was there Friday more folk seemed concerned with the tennis.

Maybe go Scottish, Irish in consecutive weeks or even Irish, open, then Scottish

Well thought I had a chance with coelsarts for a bit

My open tips are Lee Westwood 50/1
Marc leishman 80/1
Niklaus coelsarts 150/1

Watching the us women's open playoff the rules in golf are stupid ana nordqvist grazed her club in the sand and she got a 2 shot pen I thought it was harsh

not really, the rule is clear as it stands, you cannot ground your club in a hazard

saying she "only grazed" it would lead to all sorts of ambiguity around how much contact is allowed before you have been considered to have grounded your club, and thats unworkable

Looking forward to thursday. This the main one I watch every year and it seems we nearly getting it from first to last shot. Hope Sky do the coverage well

Yes they are literally doing it 14.5 hours Thursday and Friday , will seema bit weird it being on sky though

Spieth out now,...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/golf/36768330

Disaster for the sport. Hope we get a better showing in 2020, if its still around.

Golf should not have been brought into the Olympics anyway. It certainly shouldn't stay in for 2020.

I fancied him as well but have just seen he's been drawn on his own for the 1st round (and the 2nd round as well ?) and is 1st out on his own at 6.35am with a marker

After everything they did to get it into the olympics (don't agree it should be there anyway, the olympics should be for amatuers not proffesional sportsmen/women) they should be ashamed of themselves.
There are plenty of other sports, all going to the same place yet Golf is the only one having these so called professionals doing this, and as for Mcilroy's comments today about watching other sports rather than golf, why do you play then Rory? go and do something else you ungrateful sod.

I am a massive golffan have been for years but i have to say they should be well and truly ashamed of themselves, probably bitching and leaving because nobody will pay them enough.

Perhaps because golfers are a bit more mature than other sportsman, and just "ain't uncovered". I wouldn't.

Do you mean in age?

Spieth is only 22 for example and McIlroy not a lot older though.

Did anyone watch Sky's preview show last night?

It was so much better than what the BBC used to do, which seems very staid lo King back in comparison

Really looking forward to sky's coverage now

Rory Mcilroy says that winning championships and majors is more important than the Olympics

So why say that you wanted to compete at the Olympics in the first place then

According to tonight's news, the course is built on a reclaimed swamp. So sounds like a haven for mosquitoes.

Of course the majors are more important. The Olympics are probably 6th or 7th ranked at best to any golfer, and only then because of the rarity of it being every 4 years. So they'd still want to do it, but it's just a run of the mill tournament to them, never the top one. I think he was very honest and open today, and put the value of the Olympics into perspective.

He's right to consider the athletics and such like as "proper" Olympic events IMO.

I was impressed by his attitude and honesty. Better than the usual bland stuff from sportspersons.

I agree that olympic golf would be better if it were restricted to amateurs, simply because I think olympic events should be the ultimate event in that sport (possibly shared on equal footing with a world championship). On that basis, I'd prefer if sports such as golf, tennis, and football were restricted to amateurs or the young, or not even included in the games - and make space for others, such as squash.

I don't know that the top professional sportspeople were ever that bothered about being included in the Olympics, it was in the IOC's interest to add high profile and heavily sponsored (ie RICH) sports.

Not sure if I have missed it, but have any women withdrawn from the Olympics tournament ?

I agree. I'm sure a lot of other golfers, tennis players etc feel the same in private. There is a huge difference between these type of sports who have longstanding major events and sports like athletics, swimming and gymnastics where the pinnacle of the sport is an Olympic medal.

Just one..

It would be nice if they could cancel the 2020 tournament and just move on and forget Olympic participation ever happened.

I think there are a few reasons. The most generous one is that golf will be a more risky sport, because it's played in the kind of environment where mosquitos might exist, but as one of the women golfers said, the risk of catching Zika is very small, and lower than the risk of catching malaria from playing in a tournament in South Africa, and how many would pull out of one there? Realistically, golfers, like many from the world of sport, are not great thinkers gifted with scientific reasoning, and so will go with their gut, and as soon as one person withdraws, the others start to worry, and once that seed of fear is planted, it is hard to shake off.

I couldn't help but think that when Rory withdrew, he was influenced a bit by the fact that his ex-fiancee is due to carry the flag for Denmark, which is all a bit awkward, and he probably is of the age where might be thinking of having his own family soon, and there was already a bit of conflict regarding his choice of Ireland or Great Britain, so add that together and it was probably a relief for him to get out of it. Once you've made a decision like that, it is human nature to convince yourself that you never wanted to go anyway, but his comments about it were pretty graceless and he's come down in my estimation. He could simply have said that he's comfortable with his decision, and will enjoy the opportunity to follow other sports.

There's no such thing as amateur sport these days, and you either have the best taking part, or you don't bother. Boxing is a slight exception, because Olympic boxing is held in very high regard and the idea of one fight every few months just isn't viable at the Games.

Once one or two players quit, the others can follow suit, and will worry that there must be something in the health concerns. However, I can't help but think the world of golf is more about chasing the money than the pursuit of brilliance and high achievement.

The very top tennis players have talked all year about prioritising the Olympics, and despite no prize money or ranking points, they still want the glory of being Olympic champion, or at the very least, to be able to call themselves an Olympian. It could be argued that they are less money orientated, but perhaps it's more that tennis is a "proper sport". The Olympics is the biggest event in sport, and tennis players have more in common with the other participants, and are more likely to admire and respect what it's all about.

It is fair to say that when tennis was first re-introduced, it was as an exhibition, and some were less enthusiastic, but it didn't take long for it to become a top priority. As soon as Andre Agassi won the "Golden Slam", Olympic Gold became highly desirable to the glory hunters. If one of the top golfers wins gold this summer, I think some of the no-shows will be a bit jealous.