Tokyo Olympics: McIlroy and Morikawa in same group for opening two rounds

Tokyo, July 27: Rory McIlroy and Collin Morikawa will play in the same star-studded group for the opening two rounds of the men's golf competition at Tokyo 2020.

United States star Morikawa, who is of Chinese-Japanese descent, is among the bookmakers' favourites for gold having won The Open on his debut at the major earlier this month.

Morikawa also won on his first appearance at the US PGA Championship in 2020 and will have designs on celebrating another debut with glory.

McIlroy opted to skip Rio 2016 but is representing Team Ireland in Tokyo. The four-time major winner has been out of sorts heading into the Olympics, a tie for 59th at the Irish Open preceded a missed cut at the Scottish Open while he shared 46th at The Open Championship.

Im Sung-jae of South Korea completes the line-up in that group.

Justin Thomas is another American who is well fancied to top the podium. He plays the first two rounds with Paul Casey of Great Britain and China's Joaquin Niemann, in a group that precedes Masters champion and home favourite Hideki Matsuyama playing with Marc Leishman and Corey Conners.

Patrick Reed was a late addition to Team USA after Bryson DeChambeau was ruled out after testing positive for COVID-19. He tees it up with Tommy Fleetwood (Great Britain) and Shane Lowry (Ireland).

Xander Schauffele, whose mother grew up in Japan, starts his bid for the United States alongside Abraham Ancer and Christiaan Bezuidenhout.