Podcasts Other The Mike Hosking Breakfast Mike's Minute: My hero of the week

Mike's Minute: My hero of the week

Published: June 8, 2023, 9:46 p.m.

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Rory McIlroy is my hero of the week.

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Watch the Netflix doco-series Full Swing. Rory features in one episode and comes across very well.

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He said he feels like a sacrificial lamb, which he is.

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No one has spoken out more strongly for the PGA Tour.

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No one has been more passionate about defending the sport he loves, for the right reasons.

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He says in the series that he may well have let it go a bit far and said some stuff that might have been a shade aggressive.

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In that, I think he is right.

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I\'m all about people charting their own course in life. If the Saudi\'s set up a tournament and offer you money and you want to go, then good luck to you.

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You\'re not letting anyone down, unless you decide you are letting yourself down.

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As a PGA Tour supporter you can be surprised, you can be disappointed and you can disagree. But that is about where it should end.

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We are not the arbiters of other\'s destinies and McIlroy, certainly, was never in any position to tell people what to do, or even overtly judge them for doing so.

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But, that said, you admire him for his passion.

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His argument was based on the love of the sport, the competition and all the good things it had given him.

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So you can fully appreciate how gutted he must have been this week to wake up to the news the Saudi\'s have, basically, bought the game.

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But even then, the PGA Tour poster boy could see, and this speaks volumes about who he is, that ultimately it was good for the game.

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A game that grows is good for everyone.

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We get far too exercised about the Saudi\'s. People visit Saudi Arabia every year, people play sport in Saudi Arabia every year. Lydia Ko was there a few months back.

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You don\\u2019t have to connect politics to sport, any more than you have to connect politics to tourism. If we did that, we would never have been to Fiji, China or any of a couple of dozen mainstream tourist destinations.

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If we interacted only with the politically, morally, socially and fiscally pure then we would interact with next to no one.

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If Rory of all people can forgive, get it and move on - then so can we.

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