It’s funny what lands in that overloaded, festering junk pile known as the e-mail inbox these days. ‘Hey Nicholas,’ the message chirped with that teeth-grindingly irritating sense of informal, pally-wally nonchalance. ‘Have you ever tried Mongolian throat singing?’

“Why, of course,” I tutted to myself with a resigned shrug. It was one of the many hobbies and pastimes that this correspondent was making a decent fist of before the peak golf season got in the way of all these eclectic outside interests. My knowledge of the intricacies of the techniques employed by the Marrakech snake charmers, for instance, was second to none until the Scottish Open consumed us all and I forgot half of it leaving one scunnered cobra particularly uncharmed. Prior to the Open, I was a dab hand at playing ‘Greensleeves’ on the medieval lute but, after eight days in St Andrews, I can’t even strum the middle eight. And since the Ladies Scottish Open, my ability to perform a variety of Hindu Thaipusum piercings has become nothing short of disastrous.

Goodness knows what recreational pursuit will wither on the vine as we hurtle onwards to the Women’s British Open at Turnberry this week. It should be another few days to savour as Scotland’s summer of top level golf – and we use the word ‘summer’ loosely – roars on.

Of course, nothing is ever simple these days. The glorious links of Turnberry, now owned by the big, brash wannabe leader of the free world Donald Trump, is his first course to stage a golfing event of major significance since the American tycoon’s well-documented, wild and disparaging comments about Mexican migrants caused a frightful palaver.

While the Ladies Golf Union runs this week’s event, officials at the LPGA Tour gave a very strong indication that, in the wake of Donald’s diatribe, they would have preferred not to be staging the fourth major of the women’s season at one of his venues. Trump, of course, is not one to retire quietly to the garret and sit silently in the rocking chair until the heat dies down. His response to Mike Whan, the LPGA Tour’s commissioner, was typically forthright and taunting.

“You have an absolutely binding contract to play the great Turnberry Ailsa course but, based on your rude comment to the press, please let this letter serve to represent that, subject to a conversation with me on the details, I would be willing to let you play the Women’s British Open in two weeks, at another course rather than magnificent Turnberry,” said Trump in a recent letter.

Trump has stood by his bellowings and bawlings on immigration and he clearly expected that the LPGA Tour should have stood by him in the aftermath. “When others wanted nothing to do with it, and many thought the LPGA Tour was a thing of the past and had absolutely no future, I stuck with the tour,” he scribbled.

Given all of this hoopla, it will be with trepidation that many approach Turnberry this week. If Trump turns up – and there is a very good chance that he will given that it’s the first major championship to be held at a resort that bears his name – then the whole thing could descend into a circus. When the spotlight is switched on, Trump is not going to be one to muddle about in the margins and his stubborn refusal to admit that anything that thunders forth from a mouth that’s wider than the Firth of Clyde is ever wrong means he will keep digging himself into a pit. Golf officials, meanwhile, continue to try and avoid toppling into that pit as they teeter about a highly sensitive and awkward situation that impacts on just about every golfing body going forward.

At the same time, the players, both male and female, have remained largely silent on an issue that affects great swathes of the golfing scene given Trump’s extended reach, investment and influence in the game. Wading in to heavy, controversial subjects and taking a stand is not really in their make-up. When confronted with topics surrounding money or morality, why bite the hand that does a fair bit of feeding?

“Trump is a great friend of mine and I support him,” said world No 7 Suzann Pettersen at last weekend’s Ladies Scottish Open. “I think he has done a lot of great stuff for women’s golf. Obviously now he is running a different campaign and says what he says at times but that has nothing has to do with golf and what he has done for us. So I am happy to go and play Turnberry.”

Those sentiments about just getting on a playing golf will probably be echoed by all and sundry. The game is much bigger than one person, after all. The players have come and the crowds will come. This will be a celebration of all that is good about a vibrant, youthful and upwardly mobile women’s game. What to do with Trump, though, is a question for golf that won’t go away.