Ah, the spring is in the air again, muttered this scribe with a gasping wince as I cursed the day I bought that cheap, open coil mattress.

With the Masters looming on the horizon, it’s getting to that time of the year when club golfers, who probably couldn’t tell you the difference between a potted Amaryllis and tub of potted heid at any other time of the season, suddenly get all floral and horticultural as they weigh up a 7-iron into the 14th.

They start gushing about how radiant the Augusta Azaleas are looking while havering on about them being flowering shrubs of the genus Rhododendron and why they tend to flourish in well-drained, acidic soil before settling into the address, embarking on a back swing that was outlawed in medieval times and knifing that aforementioned 7-iron into the bloomin’ gorse.

Yes, the Masters, and all its abundant, flooery furnishings, tends to usher in the proper golf season. There was, of course, that other occasion which was romantically viewed as another of the traditional curtain-raisers too; the Scottish Boys’ Championship. Alas, it has been moved to a new date in the calendar this year and will now be staged in the height of the campaign at the end of June and into July, which will no doubt mean it will be lost amid the general frenzy of a jam-packed schedule.

For the dewy-eyed, nostalgic golf writers, it is the end of a glorious era. Even many of the hattered sub-editors on newspaper production desks seemed to have the event seared into their minds. “Oh aye, that one with all the bloody results,” they puffed as they mulled over the annual, head-scratching prospect of trying to shoehorn a vast list of matchplay ties onto a page.

So off you’d go, scribbling and typing; G Alexander (Ranfurly Castle) beat W McConnachie (Pumpherston) 5&4. But wait. It should’ve been W McConnachie (Pumpherston) beat G Alexander (Ranfurly Castle) 5&4. And how did you know you’d made a mistake? Because W McConnachie from Pumpherston’s faither would come rampaging into the small press room to complain. “Who’s here from The Herald?,” came the menacing question from a quietly seething parent whose son had been denied his moment of glory in print. “Er, I think he’s out at the far end of the course just now,” came the sheepish, cowardly response from the man from The Herald.

An error in the Scottish Boys’ results – and given the sheer amount of results that were getting passed through a succession of hands, errors did occasionally happen – could generate more harrumphing complaints than a moderately steamy scene shown before the watershed.

In its traditional April slot either the week before, the week of or the week after the Masters, the national under-18s flagship, for a variety of reasons, was always given terrific coverage during a six day knock-out marathon that was either bathed in sunshine or featured driving deluges, howling winds and the kind of bitter temperatures that nearly led to matches being conceded halfway up the 12th on the basis that frostbite had kicked in. It was a physically and mentally exhausting week that demanded the sturdy, unwavering resolve of the ancient mariner. And that was just trying to report on it. Playing in it was even worse.

There were triumphs, tantrums, tears and some quite terrible tankings. Making the arduous trek from Stromness to West Kilbride only to lose 8&7 in the first round, for instance, required an admirable level of golfing steeliness. Amid the countless great tales, there were the odd controversies too. One unedited biography of a player, which included in the ‘other interests’ section a colourful, explicit description of his adventurous, nocturnal carousing and conquests, ended up on the front page of a national red top. Not surprisingly, the startled high heid yins at the Scottish Golf Union swiftly began leafing through every single bio with the kind of stringent censorship you’d get in North Korea. Either that, or they were eagerly trying to find out the locations of some of the nation’s more effervescent night spots.

The player bios remained a valuable resource as we guddled and rummaged for a potential story. There were sons of famous golfers, sons of famous footballers and grandsons of not so famous footballers who perhaps made half a dozen appearances for Cowdenbeath in the 1960s. Tenuous sporting family links were par for the course.

The Scottish Boys’ Championship will go on and, for the first time, will be run concurrently with the national girls’ event. The country’s juniors will still have a terrific showpiece occasion to look forward to.

For the creatures of habit in the domestic golf writing scene, though, we bid a fond farewell to this cherished old rite of spring. April just won’t be the same again.