Does anyone really care if Rory McIlroy skips the Olympics?

When, exactly, during his nine-year professional career, did it become Rory McIlroy’s job to, in today’s Stepford golf parlance, “grow the game” of golf?

When did Jordan Spieth sign up to be grilled mercilessly about his decision to take a pass on donning the red, white, and blue in Rio, for whatever personal reason?

Perhaps I was dozing when the job descriptions of PGA Tour pros were rewritten. How else to explain the delirium surrounding Spieth’s seemingly sincere regret and McIlroy’s obvious indifference over choosing not to compete in next month’s Olympics?

“I don’t feel like I’ve let the game down at all,” McIlroy said on Tuesday in a news conference ahead of the Open Championship, which has taken a backseat to Olympic chatter this week.

“I didn’t get into golf to try and grow the game,” he said. “I got into golf to win ... major championships, and all of a sudden you get to this point and there is a responsibility on you to grow the game. I get that but at the same time, that’s not the reason that I got into golf. I got into golf to win. I didn’t get into golf to get other people into the game.”

McIlroy added, in an undisguised dig at the International Golf Federation, which did yeoman’s work in getting golf back into the Olympics after a 112-year absence, that he would tune into the Olympics, but to watch “the stuff that matters.” Such “stuff” did not include golf.

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.

Tuesday in Scotland appeared to be the real deal.

Spieth would not disclose the health issue that caused his last-minute withdrawal but he certainly did not deserve the CSI: Royal Troon treatment for his decision. Unlike McIlroy’s dispassionate display, the two-time major champion appeared to have struggled mightily with his decision — even, as Geoff Shackelford noted, that “many around the world would envy someone who has never faced a decision more difficult than deciding to play in the first Olympic golf competition in 104 years or whether to go to UT or USC.”

The result, though, was the same: the nail in the coffin for an endeavor that looked good on paper but never had a chance once the realities of the Zika virus and other Rio health concerns, the unimaginative format, and the jammed schedule set in.

Maybe media types in such high dudgeon over McIlroy’s refreshing candor would have been less shocked had they visited his Twitter page. It’s right there in black and grey: “I hit a little white ball around a field sometimes,” reads the description under the four-time major winner’s Twitter handle.

Not being an Olympics honk, it would be impossible for me to care less who goes to Rio and who doesn’t. Given my biased-observer status, I took a completely unofficial survey of an extremely limited number of golfers at my local track, after which I reached the inescapable conclusion that this preposterous uproar over Rory McIlroy dissing the summer games is nothing more than a media creation. Because NO. ONE. GIVES. A. FIG.

Shane Ryan boiled the entire imbroglio down to its essence. “There’s no rule that says [McIlroy] must become an evangelical missionary for the sport he plays,” Ryan wrote on Tuesday, after Golf Channel analyst Brandel Chamblee ripped into the 27-year-old Northern Irishman.

Amen.