There’s just no escaping the politicians is there? Everywhere you turn they are there as they career around the country whipping up support, shaking hands, nodding their heads like the Churchill Insurance dog and generally displaying the kind of cheesy, beaming grins that look like they have just bought shares in the tooth enamel industry.

If it’s not Kezia Dugdale meeting and greeting the middle management at a lathe polishing factory in Pumpherston, then it’s Nicola Sturgeon coochy-coo-ing a baby on the streets of Govan. It’s all commitments here, promises there and ruddy political pamphlets everywhere as your letter box becomes stuffed with more bumf than a taxidermist’s scullery.

Of course, points scoring is the name of the game and last week the campaign trail moved on to the fairways as Sturgeon, Dugdale and Ruth Davidson all declared that they would be boycotting this July’s Open at Royal Troon on the basis of the club’s male-only make-up.

It was an inevitable development and one we all predicted back in February when Martin Slumbers, the chief executive of the Royal & Ancient, informed the golf writers that it was “highly unlikely” that Troon’s membership review would be concluded before the summer showpiece.

And so we brace ourselves for the furious onslaught come Open week. Just to refresh our minds, here’s a little exchange that happened within about 10 minutes of the R&A’s traditional pre-championship press conference getting underway at male-only Muirfield in 2013 between Peter Dawson, the then chief executive, and a salivating news reporter.

Question: ‘As you said, single sex clubs are legal but, morally, what’s the difference between men only and whites only?’

Peter Dawson: ‘Oh, goodness me, I think that's a ridiculous question if I may say so. There's a massive difference between racial discrimination or anti-Semitism where sectors of society are downtrodden and treated very, very badly indeed. And to compare that with a men's golf club I think is frankly absurd. There's no comparison whatsoever.’

As Dawson said, it was a quite jaw-dropping comparison but in these times of mock outrage where certain fist-shakers in the media have to be seen to be offended by everything it was simply par for the course.

It’s the kind of hysterical line of questioning that the R&A can probably expect again this summer and one that the progressive thinking Slumbers would have been hoping to avoid in his first Open at the helm as the wide and varied work the game’s custodians do, be it in junior golf, male and female participation or disable opportunities, gets forgotten about amid the fist-shaking fever.

Whatever the end result of Royal Troon’s prolonged membership review – by all accounts, the good women at the neighbouring Troon Ladies Golf Club are not particularly bothered about the whole palaver anyway – the elephant in the locker room is still going to be lumbering about in July.

The former First Minister, Alex Salmond, boycotted that 2013 Open but he was bounding about here, there and everywhere at Royal Aberdeen during the 2014 Scottish Open – an event backed by Scottish Government funding - even though, like Royal Troon, it is a male club with a ladies club just a pitching wedge away. Where was the moral outrage that week from ministers and media alike? Well, there wasn’t one and that simply highlights the inconsistencies that crop up when you pick and choose the crusades and embark on occasional exercises in goading piety.

The pitch forks will be getting sharpened again for Troon, though. We can’t say we didn’t warn them.

AND ANOTHER THING

Talking of hysteria, the furore surrounding the ‘will he, won’t he’ of Tiger Woods’ predicted comeback continues to grow. The other week, he played five holes in front of some invited guests. Then he registered for the US Open. And now, wait for it, he has booked his accommodation for next week’s Players’ Championship and June’s Memorial Tournament. There’s not been such a stooshie over a hotel since Elvis warbled about one.

It’s like a golfing game of Cluedo as Woods continues to drop little titbits here and there. When will he come back? Where will he come back? And just how is his back?

Whenever and wherever it is, you have to think that if this latest comeback, like the rest of them, doesn’t go to plan then that is it for Woods.