A step into the unknown can often be quite refreshing. Well, unless you were the victim of mutiny on the high seas and that particular step took you off the plank of a galleon and into the raging, shark-infested waves below.

It was with this tingling sense of adventure into uncharted territory that a small battalion of Scottish golf writers motored south to Hemel Hempstead for the inaugural Golf Sixes.

I mean, what could be more intoxicating than attempting to locate your modest digs through the quite flummoxing frenzy of a new town’s remorseless roonaboots and road systems?

At the first roundabout, take the second exit signposted town centre and at the next roundabout, take the third exit and then the second exit at the mini-roundabout.

Proceed down the hill to the Magic Roundabout, which was actually a genuine sign and was basically a series of mini-roundabouts in one big roundabout and was as perilous as trying to birl around the Arc de Triomphe on a Penny Farthing during the Paris rush-hour. Good grief.

After all this palaver, we were prepared for anything. And that’s the attitude you had to adopt for the Golf Sixes.

To his credit, Keith Pelley, the chief executive of the European Tour, admitted on the eve of the event that those behind it were making it up as they went along.

It was very much a case of trial and error. There was risk involved too, as the tour dipped into its own coffers in the absence of a title sponsor.

When you’re confronted by eruptions of pyrotechnics, non-stop music, celebrity interludes and relentlessly cheery, sycophantic announcers, it’s easy to lapse into a grumbling, muttering air of crotchety fustiness.

A bloke with a microphone roaring “oooh, what a great effort” when one of the players completely misreads a three-footer and dribbles it hopelessly past the hole, for instance, is hardly out of the Henry Longhurst school of shrewd analysis. The “hurrah for everything” cheerleading certainly grated at times but, if you could get beyond that, there was much to admire.

Golf Sixes is never going to be the norm. It’s merely an attempt at a new, fresh addition to the measured tread of four day, 72-hole strokeplay events which will always be golf’s bread-and-butter.

The Golf Sixes was shorter, it was faster and, importantly, it was less pompous. There were no stony-faced, tut-tutting marshalls wagging their fingers and telling folk to be quiet.

Young children, of which there were many, gleefully tumbled down bankings while they were encouraged to get up close and personal with the players, who it has to be said, really got into the spirit of it all.

If modern society demands snappy, easy to digest sporting fare, then the Golf Sixes tried its best to woo them in.

A shoot-out over half-a-dozen holes swiftly cut to the chase while a course set-up featuring a couple of par-3s and short-ish par-5s encouraged attacking golf.

From a spectating point of view, following a match to a conclusion in just over 60 minutes was wonderfully refreshing in this age of five hour slogs that can be a bit like recreating the gruelling, 1,900 mile march of the Mormon Battalion.

Amid the hoopla, there were some serious issues being addressed. The shot-clock innovation, whereby players had 40 seconds (it was later reduced to 30 seconds) to make their strike on one of the holes, was a terrific addition and may work even better if it was utilised on every hole.

Don’t be surprised if the wider use of the countdown is adopted at regular tour events in the future as another weapon in the battle against slow play.

Forty seconds, of course, is a long time to hover over a shot, a point stressed by English Ryder Cup player, Andy Sullivan. “You've got ages, and it's embarrassing when you are playing on the tour and it is taking that long,” he said, with a damning assessment of the game’s creeping campaigners.

Rugby does sevens, cricket does T20 and tennis has tie-break tens. Many sports are looking for a shorter format than can happily co-exist alongside the traditional version.

It’s perhaps typical of golfy folk that we grunt and groan that it’s too stuck in its ways then continue to grunt and groan with sneering indifference when someone actually comes along and tries something different. As many clubs across the country are realising, you don’t get anywhere if you simply stand still.

Golf Sixes at least gave it a go and demonstrated that there is potential. There were hits and giggles, there were hits and misses but, importantly, there was an optimistic sense that this short-form format can be, well, a hit.