The photograph of Young Tom Morris in action which St Andrews University discovered earlier this year and their experts believe to be unique raised some interesting questions about the pose being struck.

Even allowing for the different requirements of swinging with hickory shafted clubs the bend in his left arm seemed extraordinarily accentuated.

That is what you have academics for, however and the explanation of Trevor Ledger, their golf archivist, was compelling.

Exposure times were such when these early images were being created 150 years and more ago that he would have had to hold position for some 20 to 25 seconds. Bending the left arm as he did, rather than attempting to hold it straight, was doubtless just a way of ensuring he could do so.

However Young Tom swung the club there can be no doubting what he achieved as Nick Rodger, our golf correspondent, acknowledged when placing him first ahead of the likes of multiple major winner Sandy Lyle and James Braid, the man who built so much of the best of the world’s golfing landscape, as Scotland’s greatest ever golfer.

In short, the substance was ultimately more important than the style, a message Jose Mourinho drummed out recently.

Stung somewhat by criticism of the way his Chelsea side won their latest Premier League title, dismissing coaches who claim devotion to being more stylish play as stupid and pointing out that the objective of the game remains what it has always been.

In saying so he chose an example which will have chimed with all sports lovers of a certain age, albeit less so with those raised in the digital age.

He recalled playing street football as a lad in Portugal when the teams would play in one direction until one of them had registered five goals, at which point they would change ends with the first to reach 10 winning the match.

No-one, he was quite right to point out, was the least bit interested in how the goals were scored when the bragging rights were being claimed.

It is a philosophy which works in football and most team sports, particularly at the wealthiest of clubs, because the best way to win the vast majority of sports which place the greatest emphasis on athleticism, is to over-power opponents through work-rate and muscle.

In terms of individual sports, however, a different philosophy may be required to achieve sustained success.

Tennis is the supreme example and during the past decade which has surely been the greatest in the sport’s history, there has been a wonderful contrast between the two players who had an unprecedented spell of supremacy, along with their two closest rivals.

Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, who from the Australian Open of 2004 to the US Open of 2010, won 24 of the 28 Grand Slam titles available and even since that near hegemony ended with the emergence of Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray, in particular, they have continued to contend and be compared because their styles are close to being at opposite ends of the spectrum.

In comparative terms, then, Nadal would have to be considered the tennis equivalent of Chelsea, grinding opponents down through force of will and physical presence, while Federer, perhaps the most elegant athlete any sport has ever seen, might be seen as representing the type of approach on which Mourinho was pouring his contempt.

However as tennis players they do not have the luxury a football manager has of replacing a damaged component of his sporting machine with a replacement. If, due to the physical demands of the methods employed, a participant in an individual sport suffers a similar injury then he or she is going to be out of action until they have been repaired.

Consequently, for all that there was unquestionably a spell when Nadal was superior in direct match-ups, it looks certain that it is Federer who will be remembered as the greatest ever tennis player, at least partly because his playing style has meant that having begun winning Grand Slam events two years earlier, he continues to contend when it looks as if Nadal is ever closer to submitting to the demands he placed upon his body.

There are parallels to be drawn on the golf course as we wait this week to see whether St Andrews has the power to inspire Tiger Woods to end the wait for his another major that is now longer than that between Jack Nicklaus’s 1980 US Open win and his last, stunning triumph as a 46-year-old at the Masters in 1986.

Woods complained this week about some commentators considering him “buried and done” but there is no doubt that his playing style has contributed to the succession of injuries that have undermined his bids to win and sometimes even contest majors since the 2008 US Open.

Admittedly the 14 time major winner will always be remembered as the outstanding player of his generation but if there is no revival this weekend it will seem ever likelier that his bid to overhaul the Nicklaus record haul will fail, leaving us to wonder what might have been had he paid just a bit more attention to style as well as winning in his early days.