It’s a cut-and-thrust world and even the genteel game of Poohsticks has become more cutting and thrusting. While most of us probably spent youth’s happy days nonchalantly flinging any old twig over a brig’ in to the gently rolling waters below, it now seems our carefree childhood capers of yore were sorely lacking in any form of tactical, competitive nous. The slap dash clowns that we were.

Only in this win-at-all cost era, where folk would probably trample over their own granny just to get an X-Factor audition, could some bloke come up with an elaborate formula for the ‘Perfect Poohstick’. So, that branch that you’re about to drop into the water. Are you aware of its cross sectional area, density, buoyancy and drag co-efficient? Of course you’re not. It’s a flippin’ Poohstick for goodness sake. Give it a few weeks and no doubt some tousled-haired, boggle-eyed boffin will emerge from a subterranean laboratory with a bewildering equation for guaranteeing success at Rock, Paper Scissors and Shove Ha’penny.

Here in the world of golf, meanwhile, there’s no secret recipe for getting those sticks to succeed. It’s a long way to the top of this game ... and an equally long way to the Ryder Cup. Over in Russia this week, the race to qualify for the European team for the 2016 match with the USA at Hazeltine begins at the M2M Russian Open. Well, it’s not really a race, more an almighty marathon that will see players wheezing around the world for a year until the finishing line appears at the Made in Denmark Championship next August.

It’s the first step of a mammoth trek but probably the least important one. No disrespect to the winner in Russia, but the chances of them appearing in next year’s Ryder Cup are slimmer than one of those aforementioned Poohsticks. And if they do qualify, then I’ll gladly throw myself over the bridge.

This week’s event is what you’d call a ‘soft opening’. The purse is 1 million euro – a relative pittance amid the shimmering treasure chests of the global game - and the field is fairly modest. In the grand scheme of golfing matters, the vast majority of those competing will be looking at it as an opportunity to clamber up the European order of merit and, most importantly, safeguard their immediate place at the top table instead of looking ahead to grandiose notions of a Ryder Cup.

Two years ago, the qualifying process for the 2014 Ryder Cup at Gleneagles got underway in the Wales Open. A young Norwegian called Espen Kofstadt shot a sizzling 64 in the first round of the first qualifying event and admitted afterwards that he had "put in a decent [Ryder Cup] application".

By the end of the week, he had finished tied 62nd and has barely been seen since. There’s nothing wrong with harbouring big ambitions but for great legions of the rank and file, the Ryder Cup is so far out of reach it may as well be staged on Neptune.

For someone like Marc Warren, though, it remains well within his sights. The Scot is not playing this week and at No 52 on the world rankings he can afford not to. On the fringes of that all-important top-50, Warren is hovering in exactly the kind of territory you need to be to have a realistic chance of making a sturdy Ryder Cup push. Getting in to, and staying in, that promised land of the world’s leading 50 brings huge rewards and massive Ryder Cup points-plundering potential.

Warren, an impressive matchplay campaigner at all levels from the Walker Cup as an amateur to Seve Trophy and Royal Trophy appearances as a professional in recent years, will be keen to make the most of the opportunities that could come his way. In this game, you have to seize the moments. Having added consistency to his increasingly assured play in the upper echelons, the 34-year-old has the ability and the drive to make a right good fist of a Ryder Cup assault and, by occupying a lofty place on the global order, he can give himself a head start.

In this giddy air of the privileged few, there are events with more money while many of these 'nice work if you can get it’ tournaments either don't have full fields or there is no cut. Or both. Thomas Bjorn, for instance, earned a staggering number of Ryder Cup points at the start of the 2014 season by winning the Nedbank Challenge against just 30 players. It was a victory that had a significant impact on his place in the automatic qualifying spots for Gleneagles and he never dropped out of that zone in the months that followed.

In many ways, that highlighted the inequalities of the system. The Ryder Cup may be a golfing field of dreams but the qualifying journey is far from a level playing field.