Golf has no place in the Olympics and its inclusion is contributing to the dilution of the importance of the sport\'s major championships, according to eight-times major winner Tom Watson.

The sport will return to the Olympics at Rio de Janeiro in 2016, after last being played in 1904, and while its return has been lauded by players and officials alike, the 63-year-old Watson was not keen on it staying there.

\"I don\'t want to pour cold water on it but I don\'t think it should be in the Olympic Games,\" Watson told reporters on Tuesday ahead of the Australian Open at The Lakes Golf Club in Sydney.

\"I still think of Olympics as track and field and not golf, to be honest with you.

\"We have our most important championships (the four major championships). You have golf in the Olympics. You have diluted the importance, in a sense, of the four major championships.\"

Watson said he also had an idealistic belief about what the Olympics stood for and periodic doping scandals and innuendo about athletes had tainted his feelings.

\"I probably had a pie in the sky way of looking at the Olympics as being clean and pure,\" he said.

\"I like to trust people and trust they are doing things for the right reasons.

\"When the professionals go to the Olympics, they go for the wrong reasons ... I\'m probably talking like a dinosaur.\"