Everyday life can be a fairly hum-drum cycle of stiff breezes, dust on the mantelpiece and unexpected items in the bagging area. But wait, one supermarket has upped the ante on the self check-out front by ditching the phrase “unexpected” in favour of the even more eye-brow raising term “surprising”. In my regular, clenched-teeth tussles and muttering stand-offs with that mechanical matriarch who barks out instructions from those infernal, beeping machines, I could often understand the use of “unexpected” if, say, my pile of messages featured a solitary piece of fruit amid the morass of meats, alcohol and other gout-inducing sundries. But “surprising” would suggest an altogether jaw-dropping addition to the weekly shop, as if I'd just attempted to swipe the entire cast of Midsomer Murders through the scanner while trying to pack Judith Chalmers into a 5 pence bag alongside a bottle of limescale remover and a pack of scouring pads.

Amid all these tales of the unexpected and moments of surprise, surprise, Rory McIlroy will be hoping it’s back to business as usual this week when he makes his return to action in the WGC Mexico Championship.

It seems we’re never done talking about various golfing aches, pains, twinges and tweaks. If it’s not Tiger Woods’ back then it’s Inbee Park’s thumb. The stress-fracture to one of McIlroy’s ribs has also caused a fair bit of pondering and prognosticating since he announced he would be sidelined for a number of weeks back in January.

In these crash, bang, wallop times of athleticism, power and distance, it’s probably no surprise that McIlroy felt his injury came about due to a strenuous regime in the off-season. It’s the kind of niggle – or worse - we’ll probably have to get used to among the younger, gung-ho generation who were all largely inspired by the take it to the limit and beyond approach of Tiger in his boundary-pushing pomp. The timeless, easy-osey swings of, say, Tom Watson or Colin Montgomerie are completely at odds with the explosive torque generated by the new guard. Give it another few years of almighty thrashings and the bodies of the world’s best will be crumbling like the Sphinx’s face long before they get to the over-50s circuit.

Of course, McIlroy has taken a few more sore ones over the last few days after playing golf with a certain President of the United States amid a growing palaver that has been as awkward as that stooshie at the Oscars the other night.

The Northern Irishman will no doubt be prodded on the Donald Trump subject again this week in the, somewhat, ironic surrounds of Mexico. Golf remains in a peculiar position regarding Trump. Only last week, the scribblers were sat down with Martin Slumbers, the chief executive of the R&A, who stated that the golfing powers were in “uncharted territory” regarding Trump and his ownership of Open Championship venue, Turnberry. Slumbers has made it clear that sport and politics shouldn’t mix but there’s simply no getting away from it in the current climate.

McIlroy was slaughtered, particularly online, for taking up the invitation to play golf with Trump which, in these rapid fire times of instant condemnation, fist-shaking, rabid outrage and fevered moralising, was all rather predictable given the judge, jury and executioner role that social media plays nowadays. I’m trying to think of the last time I woke up and wasn’t confronted by someone hastily issuing a statement clarifying their position or apologising for something?

McIlroy was dubbed a “fascist and a bigot” by some drooling, key-thumpers which simply underlined the hysterical, knee-jerk age in which we now exist. The unreasonable abuse directed at McIlroy in this ultimately damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t scenario was as unreasonable as the unreasonable actions of Trump that they are supposed to be railing against in the first place. There’s no reasoning with some of these hark-at-me, tweeting twits, of course.

As with all these “outrages” it will be probably have blown over by the time McIlroy stands pondering his approach to the first and the bandwagon will have rumbled on to the next fleeting topic of wide-scale indignation.

McIlroy has, and continues to be, a huge driving force for good in golf and his legacy certainly won’t be determined by an 18-hole batter about with Trump. Let’s all move along now.

AND ANOTHER THING

The Scottish Golf Awards once again illustrated the passion, dedication and hard-work that many put in to help make this great game what it is. Douglas Slater, the Stromness member who won the volunteer of the year award, summed it up when he said: “we do the simple things well, it’s all about encouraging youngsters.”

Golf can be an easy target for negativity but there are plenty of positives that should be championed.