Olympics: Andy Murray's win is far from grand

What scenes from the All England Club on Sunday. It would take some kind of prude to remind everyone that tennis has no business in the Olympics . How poignant, Andy Murray going into the Friends Box, then hugging that little boy on the way out. You would have to be a malcontent to suggest that tennis has no business in the Olympics. What a memory to have been there, to have heard God Save The Queen in the greatest sporting venue in the world. What spoilsport would suggest that tennis has no business in the Olympics? Well ... tennis has no business in the Olympics. The rule should be this: if the Olympics is not the biggest thing in your sport, then you have no business in the Olympics. The rule applies even beneath a mountain of sentiment as a home national anthem plays during a home Olympics, and even though I often get mushy during God Save The Queen . This means tennis, which has at least - at least! - four bigger events, needs to go. And football, which has probably umpteen, should get lost, with congratulations to the UAE for its commendable showing . And basketball, even with its dream teams, can run a fast break to the exit. And golf, forthcoming in the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics? Well, let me just say as somebody who adores golf, somebody who considers it an ingenious human invention, somebody who can get so caught up in a major tournament's Sunday finale that the hand shakes while trying to take notes ... Get gone. Make room for sports that never get a turn. For a city with Ipanema and Copacabana beaches, golf won out over wakeboarding? How on Brazilian earth? (Note: golf already had an insuperable story from the 1900 Olympics in Paris, during which the Calcutta-born American Margaret Ives Abbott won the Olympic golf by shooting 47 in nine holes, even though, according to research from the University of Florida, poor organisation meant she never did realise she had won an Olympics. Now, that's some poor organisation, but the best detail involved the seventh-place finisher: her mother. If you think anything in Rio is going to top that, you are seriously delusional.) To scribes who note that Murray's win over Roger Federer constituted "revenge" for the Wimbledon final : please take some sort of sedative. To those who chastise the "doubters" who claimed that Murray could not do it: look, anyone taking the time being a "doubter" over Olympic tennis clearly lacks sufficient things to do during a given day and deserves sympathy, not chastisement. To those who will resort to purple language over Murray's win, well, hey, we all succumb to purple language at some point. We get excited about things. That doesn't ensure their relevance. Look at some of the discontinued sports of Olympic history: baseball, softball, cricket, croquet, lacrosse, Jeu de Paume, polo, rugby union, tug of war ... Some of those - baseball, cricket, rugby union - needed to go, for bigger things shout from their calendar. Croquet, however, I would endorse, not least because I once stood on the croquet lawn of the Kentucky farm of a surprise croquet champion who said, in sort of a drawl, "When you get to these big tournaments, it's all-out war," and really, who would not want to see a croquet war? Softball lent great exuberance at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. Not only did crowds on the banks of the Chattahoochee River revel in the enthusiasm of the players, but you could tell that, for the players, it was the biggest thing going. Tug of war? Bring it! How in the world did some schlubs ever sit at a committee table and eliminate tug of war? Further, I would not mind seeing bowling, a demonstration event at Seoul 1988, with the demonstration gold medallists Kwon Jong Yul of South Korea and Arianne Cerdena of the Philippines. And further than that, one month from now, I would not mind seeing Murray win the US Open, his favourite grand slam event. It would uphold my long-held prediction that he will win a slam, and we all love our upheld predictions. It will afford another crescendo to his mother, the former short-term professional who built his game from wee sprite-hood, and who still can understand any issue precisely when he dials her from the road. Maybe the Olympics will give him momentum for the big thing. That will have been its significance. Follow us

Olympics: Andy Murray's win is far from grand

If the Olympics is not the biggest thing in your sport, then you have no business in the Olympics ... This means tennis, which has at least four bigger events, needs to go.