Have you managed to scrape your jaw off the floor and re-attach it to your face yet? Apart from, say, an all you can eat buffet in the media centre, it takes quite a lot to leave the golf writers floating around in awe-struck wonderment and bumping into one another like giggling bairns louping around on a bouncy castle.

The dazzling denouement to the 145th Open Championship did just that, though, as we all ended up in a quite enraptured state while our mesmerised mouths were left yawning agape like whales homing in on a shoal of undulating plankton … or gowf scribblers descending on a pile of free beef stroganoff and a rhubarb crumble.

The Henrik Stenson and Phil Mickelson showdown on Sunday was an all guns blazing shoot-out; a kind of High Noon at Troon … even if the leading pair teed-off at 2.35pm. You half expected Gary Cooper and Lee Van Cleef to be swaggering about inside the ropes with pistols cocked. As long as they had the relevant lanyards, credentials and armbands, of course.

For Watson and Nicklaus in 1977, read Stenson and Mickelson in 2016. They may not have the same collective stature of their decorated, illustrious predecessors from that original Duel in the Sun, but the quality of golf produced on Sunday was possibly even higher. Just like Jack and Tom had done almost 40 years ago, Henrik and Phil walked off the final green with arms draped around one another’s shoulders. It was a terrific advert, not just for golf but for sport in general. There was ultimately only one winner in Stenson but the game, and the spirit of the competition and the mutual respect, triumphed as well. You can’t ask for much more.

It had been some old week at Royal Troon. The hastily re-arranged vote by the club to admit female members was meant to be a decisive decision that would allow the golf to take centre stage. But then we all ended up falling into a burning Olympic ring of fire and the Zika virus, more withdrawals and withering comments about golf’s place in the Games dominated the agenda in the championship’s build up.

Following the palaver over Muirfield’s initial failed vote to admit women members and the bumbling, confusing debacle at the US Open, which proved that golf not only has some bamboozling rules but often doesn’t know how to implement them effectively, the Royal & Ancient game sorely needed some positive PR after a series of crippling mishits. And, my goodness, it got it on Sunday. This was a finale that grandstands were invented for. In the midst of the Olympic mutterings and moanings during the week, there was plenty of talk about “growing the game” and using a variety of platforms, the Olympics included, to help generate an upsurge in participation.

Stenson and Mickelson single-handedly did their bit to inspire, excite, engage and enthral in a way that only top level sport can. For the first time, the Open Championship was not on terrestrial television, and there will always be debate on whether moving such a marquee event to Sky will have an impact on the sport’s development. The avid golf fan, for instance, will always migrate to satellite with its bells and whistles approach. In that sense, it’s preaching to the converted. Meanwhile, the casual, once a year observer probably just enjoys the opportunity to have it on as a background companion interspersed with occasional murmurings of Peter Alliss’s meandering whimsy.

Viewed as the cash hungry ghoul who sold out to the devil, the Royal & Ancient, in the end, was left with little choice to take the Sky deal after the BBC, which had been gradually turning its back on golf anyway, pulled out of the bidding process and declared that its preferred option would be to broadcast only highlights. There was certainly plenty to shove in a glittering highlights package on Sunday but it was a shame that the masses could not see it all unfold live because this was a finish that deserved the widest possible audience.

Despite all the talk of golf’s young ‘Fab Four’ taking charge of the world order, it was a couple of older swingers in Troon who were moving and shaking at the top of the hit parade.

In this game for all the ages, the 40-somethings of Stenson and Mickelson produced a shoot-out for the ages.