Shane Lowry would love to be Ireland's flag-bearer at the Tokyo Olympics - and then wants to take home a medal at the end of it.
The new Open champion and Rory McIlroy both missed the Rio games in 2016 due to fears over the Zika virus, and Padraig Harrington and Seamus Power competed instead.
But after his first major title triumph Lowry, 32, is keen to experience an Olympics as a competitor and, at 17th in the world rankings, is second only in the pecking order to McIlroy (ranked third) for next year's Games.
Lowry said: "Yeah, it will be incredible, won’t it? I missed the last one, I got a lot of stick for that. I had my own reasons.
"This has gone a long way to putting me on the plane for Japan.
"I'm very excited to be going. We’ll be going over the week after the Open next year for the opening ceremony, so to be around all of that will be pretty cool.
"Hopefully, I can go there. Wins are hard to go by. Hopefully I can bring a medal home."
And, at that opening ceremony, the Clara man would love to lead the team out, as boxers Katie Taylor did in London and Paddy Barnes did in Rio.
"Absolutely," he stressed.
Lowry hopes that winning the Claret Jug won't change his life. "The next little while is going to be a little crazy, isn’t it," he said.
"When all the dust settles, finally, in a month or two, I think I'll be able to go back to doing what I normally do and just being me.
"I'm always going to have the label of major champion - Jeez, it’s hard to actually believe I am saying it - but going around the city yesterday with TV cameras following you, it’s a bit weird.
"New York (next week) will be (mad). But I don’t think I’ll change. I hope not, anyway.
"I haven’t actually seen the scale of the reaction yet. I’d imagine everyone in the country was watching the golf on Sunday and willing me on to win.
"It's great to be able to bring so much joy to people. Irish people are great, they follow us in everything we do.
"If there’s a bandwagon, they'll jump on it. It's great!"
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