IF I can sum up the reaction on mainstream media and on social media to the latest triumph by Rory McIlroy in two sentences, this would be it: “Everybody is being disingenuous and cynical when it comes to Rory McIlroy. Except me.”

While flags and bonfires and marches are the street manifestation of the sectarianism on which partition was built, the columnist musings and the politicos’ online chat evince a different kind of sectarianism. The former is what security responses are built on; the latter is what policy and legislation are moulded from.

We’re asked to believe that the real villains in this latest round of Rory revisionism are those who use their limited AI and Photoshop skills to graft an Ulster banner on to the Holywood man’s golf bag, or who point to his decision to represent Ireland at the Olympics as proof that he’s one of ours. But none of these excitable tribesmen and women can hold a candle to the media and political reps who affect chest-heaving disappointment to find out (again) that not everybody is as sound as they are.

In a polity so grotesquely dysfunctional that societal cohesion is further away today than it was in 1922, the clumsy efforts of the unplatformed and unheard to claim an identity that their home can’t give them can be crude and infuriating, but they are also inevitable and understandable. The smug and judgmental wittering of the 10p-a-word scribblers and the Stormont canteen iPhone fusiliers may be smoother round the edges and they’ve likely undergone a press office valet, but they too are claiming Rory for themselves.

It's teeth-grindingly, butt-clenchingly familiar:

• ‘Rory defies efforts to put him in a box – it’s his Northern Irish stubbornness.’

(I’ve just put him in a box of my own and I’m gambling on you not noticing.)

• ‘Congrats Rory! (Smiley face emoji.) You make Ulster proud.’

(My part of it, at least.)

• ‘How come Our Wee Country produces so many world class talents? 

(Union jack because there’s no Ulster flag emoji.)’

• ‘Say it softly, but Rory owes it all to the Golfing Union of Ireland.’

(I really wanted to write ‘Yay, he’s a Catholic’ but I’m a bit more sophisticated than that.)

• ‘It’s the humble Holywood boy in Rory that keeps him out of the sectarian bearpit.’

(If only every kid went to Sullivan Upper and spent his childhood on a golf course this wee place would be just perfect.)

The truth is, I’m more comfortable seeing a thousand ‘Rory’s one of ours’ posts on Facebook and Twitter than I am reading one slyly manipulative column that hides its own tribalism by decrying the rawer tribalism of others. And I’d rather see an inexpert AI depiction of Rory as being on ‘our side’ than an MLA’s or MP’s cynical press-ganging of him on to the crew of their flag-flying ship. I don’t share in the strictly bespoke explosions of joy that the media and politicians detonate every time Rory wins a major and I’m at least going to try and be honest about why that is. 

It’s true that he has byballed press conferences when things don’t go his way and that he can throw a club and smash a tee box with the best of them. But if I said that’s why I’m not a fan I’d be lying.

It’s also true that he weaves a meandering and confusing narrative when it comes to the Ireland/ Northern Ireland issue; but then he faces the kind of conflicting superstar expectations that mere stars aren’t asked to deal with, never mind yer ordinary Joes. So I discount too that as an explainer of my indifference.

And that leaves me to face the shabby reality that my demanding a transfer from Team Rory early in his career was prompted by things that mostly have nothing to do with him. I don’t have a Rory problem. I have a Robin problem. 

It’s not his fault that he has become a lightning conductor for the negative and regressive aspects of ourselves forged from lives lived in place where identity is a blasted battlefield when it’s supposed to be a comfort hammock in a field of flowers.

The closest I can come to articulating a reason for wanting Rory to end up in a water hazard on the 18th is that I can’t stand the morning after. Radio Ulster clearing the decks with ‘Celebrate or Else’ VE Day-level hysteria. The green-jacket party press office images overlaid with over-enthusiastic congratulations and the party logo. The newspaper presentations of Holywood as the representation on Earth of Van Morrison’s ‘Wouldn’t it be great if it was like this all the time?’ philosophising. And worst of all, so far ahead in the Worst of All Champion Stakes that the jockey’s looking over his shoulder, is that commentator/columnist staple: “I’m going to show how much I hate people claiming Rory by claiming him myself. But I’m claiming him for the good people, you understand.”

In a way, by washing my hair instead of attending the party I suppose I’m claiming Rory too. Yep, you are, some might say –  you’re claiming him for the misanthropes and the grumps. But I’d like to think I’m claiming him for those of us who no longer want to live in a place where a superstar’s only worth celebrating if he’s our superstar – ours by religion, ours by politics, ours by class. And I’m claiming him for people who don’t want a media and political class skilled in the art of dividing people by flag and church, but utterly unskilled in the art of self-awareness when that division spills over from the street on to the golf course. I’m claiming him for people who refuse to be lectured by those who tell us we’ve lost something profound when Marks and Spencer withdraw a union jack bag that was sent here by mistake and then tell us to put away the flag and shut up and smile because Rory’s won again.