The exceptional attraction of golf, I always say, is that it’s a competitive game that turns on the unforced errors of the individual players.

In other sports, you see, a player has to contend with other players tackling them and taking the ball off their feet, bowling tricky balls to them with unreadable spin, returning their serve at 100mph down the line or attempting to hit them extremely hard on the side of the head.

But in golf, a chap has to face the yawning existential horror of personal accountability. There is nowhere to hide; no one else to blame. By rights, therefore, the golfer should be the deepest thinker and the finest spirit of the entire sporting world. Every day he is forced to face such uncomfortable truths about his own shortcomings. Which is why it is always so entertaining to discover that professional golfers have the spiritual sophistication of spermatozoa and the mental capacity of gnats.

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