The Week In Zika: LPGAers Aren't Quite Buying Zika; DJ Is Out

It's been nice to not read Zika-excuse related stories but they seem unavoidable as Dustin Johnson has pulled out of the Rio Olympic games citing the Zika virus. From an unbylined AP story:

"This was not an easy decision for me," Johnson said in a statement released by his management company. "But my concerns about the Zika virus cannot be ignored."

Ignore we will and move on.

More fun was reading Randell Mell's quotes from the LPGA's finest at the U.S. Women's Open where Lydia Ko is chipping away at the lead (Beth Ann Nichols reports).

Stacy Lewis, while wisely wheeling out the understanding of Zika's grave threat to the male golfers of the world (rumors are it targets only those who play in The Open and PGA), notes this:

“It’s hard,” Lewis said. “Those guys play for so much money, and I think you kind of get lost in that at times. If I knew that I had the potential of a $10 million paycheck at the end of the year, I'd probably do my schedule a little bit different, too.

“You become a product of that environment. You have that opportunity to win that that money, you become a product of it. And you can't blame them for being that way. They are bred to be that way, with the amount of money that they play for.

“On our tour, while we have some pretty good paychecks, it's nowhere close to what those guys are playing for. So, to me, the opportunity to play in the Olympics, and to represent your country, is probably worth as much as winning a U.S. Women’s Open or winning an [ANA Inspiration] or winning any of those big majors. Winning a gold medal would be up there with winning a major championship, to me, and that's the difference of the men versus the women.”