Rory McIlroy is going into this Sports Personality of the Year awards show with as positive a mindset as he can muster. “Well,” he recently told Telegraph Sport, “if I don’t win it this time, I never will.”

For McIlroy, read UK golf, because everyone on these shores with an affinity to the professional male game will be feeling the same. If the sport does not cheer on a Spoty crown on Thursday night then it may as well give up on ever turning up at this shameless BBC back-slap again.

And, whisper it, perhaps even boycott the ghastly BBC spectacle.

Of course, it should be a foregone conclusion that McIlroy picks up that strange trophy, which looks half Dalek, half triffid. Forget about his contribution to Europe’s astounding victory over Team USA in New York – a week during which he overcame crowd hostility more brutal than any suffered by a golfer before – and focus purely on his April achievement.

The Northern Irishman had not won a major in 11 years and only required the Masters title to become just the sixth player in history to win the career grand slam. Look at the names he was trying to join: Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player, Ben Hogan, Gene Sarazen. Think of the players who came up one short: Arnold Palmer, Tom Watson, Lee Trevino, Phil Mickelson, Sam Snead. Apart from Player, all those legends are American.

But McIlroy was not merely fighting for his birthplace. Augusta is the venue where he cried as a 21-year-old, where he had the Green Jacket in his grasp, only to let it go with that devastating final-round 80. In beating Justin Rose in that unforgettable play-off this year, he exorcised his own demons at the same time as smashing through the ceiling for an entire continent. He is the first European to complete the set and did so in perhaps the most pressurised environs imaginable in his chosen profession.

What exactly does Spoty expect from McIlroy? To invent the new penicillin? In truth, McIlroy should not be competing to be the “year’s best” UK sports professional, but the greatest of all time. It is actually insulting he has not won it before and the befuddlement and anger on the fairways that he is still waiting perfectly encapsulate the ancient game’s attitude to this annual jamboree.

Spoty is anti-golf and if the 2025 recipient is anyone else but the bar steward’s son from a Belfast suburb, it could be the straw poll that breaks the camel’s back. Everyone out. Spoty should be blackballed…

At the beginning, however, it seemed so promising. In 1957, Dai Rees was the fourth winner when the Welshman was recognised for his role as player-captain in inflicting just the second Ryder Cup defeat on Team USA. The Brits adored the plus-foured pastime. This was the first of many.

Well, how about one in the preceding 67 years? In this intervening period, the UK has hailed 30 major successes in the men’s and women’s game and six different players have become world No 1. There is not another global sport in which Great Britain and Ireland has punched so high and so mightily. The lack of Spoty recognition is nothing short of a national disgrace.

It has reached the stage where our major winners do not even figure on the shortlists. Catriona Matthew and Georgia Hall were both ignored after winning the Women’s Open in 2009 and 2018 respectively. In 2022, Matt Fitzpatrick was snubbed after winning the US Open.

Darren Clarke came second in 2006, but was beaten by Zara Phillips. Maybe that was not quite as ridiculous as Phillips’ mother seeing off George Best and Barry John into second and third in 1971, but it was close. Clarke finished runner-up again in 2011, that year’s Open champion being held off by Mark Cavendish. That gave golf hope.

And when McIlroy won two majors in 2014, it seemed assured. The gap to Sir Nick Faldo’s victory in 1989 – ludicrously, he did not even make the podium after winning both the Masters and Open in 1990 – was about to be breached. Alas, Lewis Hamilton showed up with his dog and that was that. McIlroy lost out to a cute pooch.

Why? Luke Donald has a theory. “They’ve turned it into such a show,” this year’s victorious Ryder Cup captain told me. “When I was nominated, they did this whole skit about me being Luke Skywalker, with my clubs depicted as lightsabres. It was a bit demeaning, to be honest.”

A decade later, Fitzpatrick declined the invite even before he was left off the shortlist. “The recent history told me I had no chance and I didn’t want to give them the pleasure,” he told me.

Ian Poulter described himself as “disgusted” by that omission. Yet he was not surprised. “Spoty is a joke,” he said. “I’m glad Matt saved himself the air fare. In 2012, the GB Olympic team won the team prize, despite it saying in Spoty’s rulebook that an Olympic team could not win it.

“They just changed the rules at the last minute, meaning the Europe Ryder Cup team from that year did not win. Pathetic. And then for Rory not to win it a few years later?”

McIlroy was nominated two years ago, but did not attend the evening. “It’s not what it was, is it?” he said. And it will stride ever deeper into those shadows of irrelevance unless the 36-year-old is the resounding victor. It is time to end this hate-hate relationship. Now or never for golf and Spoty.