South African golfer Jaco van Zyl is bucking the trend and skipping two majors this month -- the British Open and the PGA Championship -- so he can be fresh for the Olympics.Theres a long list of players who have gone the other way and opted out of golfs return to the Olympics after 112 years, either because of the Zika virus or for scheduling reasons.Top-ranked Jason Day and Rory McIlroy are among 12 eligible players so far choosing to give the Rio de Janeiro Games a miss. Three South Africans alone, Louis Oosthuizen, Charl Schwartzel and Branden Grace, decided not to go, giving Van Zyl his chance on South Africas team.Ranked No. 65 in the world, Van Zyl said he had been feeling the effects of a long season and, adamant that he wanted to play at the Olympics, he chose to withdraw from next weeks British Open and the PGA from July 28-31. The Olympics are next month.I expect that there will be a camp that will criticize me for withdrawing from the majors, Van Zyl told South African website Sport24. Rory (McIlroy) said in a recent press conference that we play four `Olympics a year because major titles are what we play for, but I dont agree. To me, the Olympics is the pinnacle of all sporting events.The majors will still be there next year, but I dont know if I will get another chance (at the Olympics) in 2020.Van Zyls decision will be a small but welcome boost for Rio organizers, who had envisioned a golf competition with the best players in the world battling it out for an Olympic gold medal. That wont be the case. Alongside Day and four-time major winner McIlroy, another five players in the top 25 in the world have said they are not going to Rio. Custom Andre Dawson Jersey . -- PGA TOUR Canada member Steve Saunders took a three-stroke lead Saturday in the Web. Greg Maddux Jersey Large . Scott Kazmir allowed four hits in seven shutout innings, Michael Brantley hit a two-run homer in a three-run first inning and the Indians maintained their hold on an AL wild-card spot with a 4-1 win over the Houston Astros on Saturday night. http://www.customcubsjersey.com/ . Its the second straight game Bell has scored in extra time for Kelowna, which beat the Brandon Wheat Kings 6-5 on Friday, and he now has four game-winning goals on the season. David Ross Jersey Large . Roman Josi had a goal and an assist to lead the Predators to a 4-1 victory over the Dallas Stars on Monday night. Custom Kerry Wood Jersey . Giroud, who wasnt in the starting lineup for two matches after allegations about his private life and a decline in form, scored twice in the first half. Tomas Rosickys chip made it 3-0 before half time at Emirates Stadium, while defender Laurent Koscielny scored an unmarked header in the second half. A schoolboys life in middle-class India in the late 1960s and early 1970s moved seamlessly from one sport to another with no evident guiding hand instructing us on when the switch was to be made. You played cricket for a few months, and then suddenly the field hockey sticks would come out, then it was time to kick a football around, and soon your attention turned to table tennis or badminton - more commonly the shuttlecock variety; less frequently the one played with a little woolly ball.Such sports were interspersed with games of a more provincial provenance such as kabaddi, gilli-danda, seven-stones, and other assorted country cousins. Looking back, I have no idea how we knew to move from one to the other: the sequence went without saying, as it came without saying.You might think the sheer abundance of sports would have made for an egalitarian playground in which those with limited talent in, say, cricket, could make up for it by excelling at soccer or field hockey or kabaddi. But you would be, for the most part, quite wrong. It was evident that the divine distribution of sporting talent or acumen was both unfair and capricious: the same guys who scored centuries in cricket were invariably the ones who banged in the goals in hockey or football, or walked away with the trophy at the end of the table tennis tournaments. These neighborhood dadas commanded the respect of everyone else and were much revered for their sporting acumen.Conversely, those who made up the numbers in the cricket XI were also all too often the ones who spent their time futilely chasing the soccer ball but rarely coming into actual contact with it, let alone booting it into the goal. Part of the disenchantment of growing up was the realisation that there was no yet-to-be-discovered sport out there at which one might finally excel, exacting sweet revenge for all the daily humiliations endured until then.One catches glimpses of the portable nature of exceptional sporting talent every now and then. I remember a Wimbledon crowd gasping in appreciation as Roger Federer casually and elegantly redirected a speeding tennis ball with pinpoint precision straight into the hands of a ball boy - with his foot. Clearly the Fed must have been a mean soccer player in his youth. And I once watched some grainy video footage of Yuvraj Singh playing tennis at an exhibition match that left no one in any doubt that the phenomenal eye-hand coordination that launched six sixes in an over translated innto booming serves and topspin forehands as well.dddddddddddd And the entire South African cricket team looks as if they could easily swap their whites for rugby or soccer jerseys and still hold their own.Looking back in my minds eye at some of these talented but nameless allrounders from maidans in Bangalore and Chennai, a couple of things stand out. First, they had certain physical attributes that distinguished them from others. These included wiry or strong physiques much better developed than those of others in their own age group; keen eyesight; and an instinct for timing and positioning their bodies in such a way as to create optimal impact. They were, quite simply, physically more advanced than others in their peer group.But it was a second, more ineffable, quality that set them apart, one that I did not, indeed could not, appreciate back then: its almost as if they were able to watch the game from up on high, from a different vantage, which allowed them to see a certain grammar or geometry that was invisible to the rest of us. This translated into them having more time, appearing to be less rushed, than others. When they were batting, they instinctively knew where the fielders - that is to say the gaps in the field - were. When fielding they knew to read the angles faster and move towards the ball to cut it off rather than give chase after it was hit. And when bowling, they werent the ones with the long run-ups and the grunting effort but the ones who got most of the wickets. Not surprisingly, these allrounders were invariably selected to be the captains of teams, irrespective of the sport, on which they played.I suspect the range of sports played by the average schoolboy has diminished considerably in the India of today, as cricket has risen to an unprecedented eminence and is pretty much played all year round. Specialisation and organised playing of sport (rather than just playing with friends in the neighborhood) also happens earlier in life than it did in those relatively carefree days of the past.While I remain quite skeptical that these developments will result in Indias future cricketers being more competitive internationally, there is no doubt in my mind that the decline of the dada of the maidan, that effortless jack of all sports, is something to be mourned. They were the true allrounders of their times. ' ' '