Rory McIlroy has dropped the Aberdeen Asset Management Scottish Open from his 2016 schedule.
The world No 3, who is in the Middle East competing in the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship, used his pre-tournament press conference to say that he wouldn’t be making the trip to Castle Stuart near Inverness in July.
“No. It’s not on my schedule," the four-time major winner said.
McIlroy was poised to compete in the domestic showpiece at Gullane last year but was forced to withdraw after injuring his ankle playing football, a costly incident that also caused him to miss the defence of his Open title the following week at St Andrews.
In 2014 McIlroy said of the fledgling ‘modern links’ at Castle Stuart: “It’s not that Castle Stuart is too easy, it’s just not a true links course.”
While that opinion of the Highland course may have coloured his thinking ahead of this season’s championship, the fact the summer schedule is jam-packed will have had a considerable bearing on his planning. With the return of golf to the Olympics, the subsequent re-arranging of the diary means there will be only 11 days between the end of the Open and the start of the US PGA Championship, the final major of the year, in July. The Olympics will begin in August.
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