Food glorious food eh? The other week, I shuffled tentatively into one of those meaty maelstroms of a restaurant which had all manner of cattle on the menu and was left simply staggered by the sheer scale of the chomping, carnivorous excess.
Everywhere you turned there were giant, sizzling rib cages, colossal charred carcasses and vast, seared clumps. It looked a bit like the smouldering, scorched aftermath of the meteor strike that obliterated the dinosaurs.
As for the drooling, devouring diners themselves? Good grief. With their tearing, slicing, sooking and slurping, the intensity of the feeding frenzy was so ferocious, it resembled a shoal of ravenous Piranha fish stripping a stricken Wildebeest down to its bare bones … only much less civilised.
Read more: McIlroy produces sensational final round to win Deutsche Bank Championship
It was all fairly hard to stomach. Rather like the reaction to Russell Knox’s decision to pick his old friend Duncan Stewart for the end of season World Cup of Golf in Australia. As the leading player on the global pecking order, Knox could choose his own partner and he opted for his fellow Highlander and former Jacksonville University colleague Stewart, who is currently 376th in the world.
Read more: American dream leaves Knox as a European outsider
Cue much muttering and moaning in Scottish professional circles as a rather petty palaver was stoked up over the past few weeks. He may be competing on the second-tier Challenge Tour but at least Stewart has actually won this year and is showing some form, which is more than can be said for many of the stuttering Scots in 2016. Indeed, only Knox and Stewart have tasted success on the top two levels of the tours.
The unofficial protocol is that the highest-ranked player would just pick the next best bloke on the world standings but Knox has dipped deeper than a burial at sea and has gone with the man he knows and with whom he feels comfortable with. Yes, it may have raised more eyebrows than a cosmetic surgeon working the Sunset Strip but when he’s not ‘one of the boys’ on the European Tour due to his remoteness of being a full-time card-holder in the US then you can hardly blame him.
In the aftermath of Knox’s failure to earn a Ryder Cup wild card last week, there was a sense in certain quarters that some folk in this country were actually quite pleased that he didn’t get the nod. That, in itself, is the kind of envious, insular school of thought that often comes from a nation with a chip on its shoulder.
Knox has done it - and will no doubt continue to do it - his way, which has been the case for most of his career. Like Martin Laird before him, the 31-year-old Inverness exile has established himself far away from the cliques and the various nod-and-a-wink customs that can be forged in smaller pools and has adopted a single-minded, disciplined approach of dedication and desire which has reaped considerable rewards.
Knox wasn’t part of any so-called Scottish system of development. In fact, he knew – and he has said it himself – that he had to get out of the country to realise his golfing ambitions. That he has risen to 20th in the world, and has won twice on the toughest tour on the planet, is a truly inspiring Scottish sporting success story but one which is often not given the credit it deserves.
Knox at the Ryder Cup would have been a real tonic. It wasn’t to be but, let’s face it, if it hadn’t been for his rousing global conquests over the past year, there would be very little to get worked up about on the Scottish men’s professional front in the current campaign.
Indeed, the tartan army on the main circuit is in danger of being savaged like a lamb shank in that aforementioned restaurant if fortunes don’t improve.
Behind Knox, there is Richie Ramsay at No 55 on the Race to Dubai. And behind him is David Drysdale at No 87. The rest are scrambling to keep their cards, though. With the top 110 maintaining their playing privileges, the likes of Craig Lee (120th), Marc Warren (126th) and Scott Jamieson (144th) are all facing the prospect of a return to qualifying school while Paul Lawrie (134th) and an injury-hampered Stephen Gallacher (146th) will be spared by virtue of their past career earnings. The fare dished up has been largely hum-drum. As the season unravels, you could say there’s plenty of food for thought. Pass me the antacids.
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