Even the defending British Open champion is American - Zach Johnson waded through the deluge to win at the home of golf, St. Andrews, last year.

There have been many faux "death knell" moments for golf in the Olympics, as one after another, world No. 1 Jason Day, McIlroy (No. 3), fourth-ranked Dustin Johnson, and Spieth (No. 2) followed Adam Scott (No. 8) and others to the Rio exit ramp. The best players from around the world have gathered in Scotland to take on the iconic course, which is played as a out-and-in seaside links.

If Rory McIlroy and Jordan Spieth choose not to play in the Olympics, that's their business.

On a personal level, Rose says he would like to look back on a career that reads "multiple major champion and Olympic gold medalist" - at the moment, just the 2013 U.S. Open has been ticked off that to-do list. With four important majors already on the calendar, the Olympics wasn't crucial. It's an air shot played downhill, and if it's playing into that real blustery right-to-left wind, the golf ball can just go anywhere. After a series of near misses at majors, Johnson, with his breakthrough at Oakmont last month, has muscled his way into the top echelon, bumping all of the others, at least for now, into backup-singer roles - and by a simple chronological countback, pushed McIlroy into the No. 4 position. I can't worry about other guys.

And he won his first pro tournament when Jason Day was a teenager mouthing off to his coach Col Swatton at an Australian golf academy.

The 28-year-old is the current world number one and has won seven times in the past 12 months.

"So it's interesting he thinks no-one asked him at the time because I'm sure people did ask him at the time and that's one of the reasons golf got in the Olympics".

The Open Championship is so old that in its early years when a player hit a wayward tee shot and shouted "Fore!" he knew it had nothing to do with numerology. Speith, 22, is confident his game is suited to the challenges Troon will provide, too. "I would hope the International Olympic Committee would definitely reconsider and look at some other options going forward".

"It's one of those holes where you just try to hit it in the middle of the green", McIlroy said.

"I'm excited to be back and to a golf course that I've never played on before", the Northern Irishman said on Tuesday.

He said the Tiger Woods era spoiled golf fans into believing everyone should win tournaments when given a chance, and no one was better at that than Woods. And every time I tried to get it out, it would go back into the same spot.

"Otherwise, it's a pretty lonely game when things aren't going your way, and you struggle a little bit, because all you have to do is be reminiscing about how well you played a few months ago".

Like most links courses Royal Troon is at its most unsafe when the wind blows, as Rose discovered in practice at the infamous Postage Stamp eighth hole, which at 132 yards is the shortest par-3 on the Majors rota. The par three 8th, the so-called Postage Stamp, is a mere 123 yards long, meaning it is the shortest hole to be played in Open Championship history. Three weeks later, he won the PGA Championship with such a dominant display of power that he became the first player to finish at 20-under par in a major.

The caddie, Billy Ciplinski out of the nearby golf club at Prestwick, was taken to a medical center at Royal Troon and then onto a hospital.