It's very easy to say that you would reject an invitation from Donald Trump out of principle.
You can scream it from the rooftops, you can get it permanently scarred onto your skin, but the odds of the president of the United States of America wanting to hang out with the average Joe for a few hours are fairly slim.
Those odds increase exponentially if you're one of the most famous golfers in the world. If you're Rory McIlroy the prospect of having to piss off one of the most powerful men in the world is a daunting reality. Especially when all he wants to do is swing a few clubs on a golf course with you.
So McIlroy played a round of golf with Trump.
All he got in return for doing what he always does, only with the wrong person, was an endless slew of nasty messages labeling him a fascist, a bigot and everything in between. It reached the point where he had to release a statement explaining his actions.
https://twitter.com/SportsJOEdotie/status/835253976207671296
If you need someone to cut through the bullshit, you can't do much better than Shane Lowry. The Clara golfer gave his take on the fallout from the golf game with Trump to RTE Sport, and he really nailed the lose-lose nature of the situation for McIlroy.
If Lowry were in McIlroy's shoes, he wouldn't have known what to do.
"I don’t know what I can say about that because no matter what I say on this subject it’s going to be the wrong thing."
"If I was asked to play golf with Trump I don’t know what I’d do. I’m not going to say ‘no’, I’m not going to say ‘yeah’.
Lowry echoed the sentiment of McIlroy's statement that it was only a game of golf, and it should have been treated accordingly.
"At the end of the day, he’s still the President of America and I’m sure that’s what Rory thought to himself ‘the President of America is after asking me to play golf, I’m going to go play golf’.
"It’s just a game of golf. It’s not like he was up in the White House having meetings with him for a few days. That’s all it is, a game of golf."
It was just a game, folks.
