World No 1 Rory McIlroy can see dollar signs everywhere but he could risk losing it all by signing with Nike.

 Rory McIlroy considers whether to join Tiger Woods at Nike, the Northern Irishman risks compromising the commodity most precious: namely, his talent.

Duel at Jinsha Lake: Tiger Woods (left) and Rory McIlroy in Zhengzhou Photo: GETTY IMAGES

By Oliver Brown

Doubtless you have heard the Aesopic tale of the dog and its reflection.

The story is beguilingly simple: a dog bearing a bone (or perhaps a piece of meat or cheese, the versions are manifold) glances down and spots its own reflection in the water.

Mistaking it for another animal carrying something more desirable, it opens its mouth to bark and thus drops what it was carrying, its lost bone never to be retrieved again.

Staying in this realm of the figurative, we see that Rory McIlroy stands, perhaps, at this very water crossing.

What he clutches are his golf clubs, the indispensable tools of his lucrative trade. But as he reaches the stream his eyes discern a better set of clubs, all of them stamped with a tick-shaped logo.

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