Whoever decided that hosting the Scottish Open and the Open Championship in successive weeks was a good idea must have shares in a laundrette. As the flustered, fevered golf writers charge from one event to the next, while grunting and groaning like a Wimbledon finalist clattering a robust backhand down the line, the basics logistics of life on the road continue to cause considerable anguish. The championships themselves are not the problem, of course. It’s the far more pressing issue of getting the burgeoning bundle of semmits and socks washed and dried amid the breathless turnaround. Having exhausted the hand cranked mangle, this correspondent ended up thundering down the M77 to Troon with a variety of garments billowing perilously from the car window in a fairly reckless attempt to rid them of their dampness. If you’re birling by the Monkton roonaboot, you’ll probably see a string vest lying forlornly at the roadside.

This general moistness is not helped by the soggy Scottish summer. Long, light nights? It just means you can see the misery for a few more hours.

Those hardy souls trudging about at Castle Stuart over the weekend certainly endured a hang on in the fairly miserable conditions. Lucrative television deals with big American broadcasters may bring in the readies and showcase Scotland and sponsors to an audience on the other side of the Atlantic but for the paying punter it comes at a price with the last tee-times pushed back to after 3pm.

On Saturday night, they had clearly decided to say ‘sod this’ amid the sodden conditions. It was a shame for Castle Stuart, a superb, welcoming venue which always puts on a terrific, enthusiastic occasion, as the final groups during the third round were greeted by empty grandstands and the kind of atmosphere you’d get on an outer planet of the solar system. In terms of a spectacle, it was as downbeat as the funeral march.

Of course, the miserable weather had a sizeable impact – and the hectic schedule of other sporting events at the weekend probably didn’t help either - but the fact that attendances for the whole week were down by some 23,000 on the total that turned up the last time the championship was at Castle Stuart in 2013 remains a major concern. That’s surely not just the Andy Murray factor. If you take £30 as the standard ticket price, you’d be looking at upwards of £600,000 in lost revenue.

Across the board, spectator numbers for a variety of golfing occasions on Scottish soil have been trending downwards in recent years.

The sun-drenched Muirfield Open in 2013, for instance, had a decline in footfall of some 20,000 on its previous staging at the East Lothian links. Cost, certainly at an Open where you could easily get through a couple of hundred pounds with tickets, nibbles, the odd gargle from the bar and one or two souvenirs, is clearly a factor but perhaps the golden age of the massed ranks is over. Golf fans are a loyal, stoic bunch but they can’t go to everything.

Last year’s inaugural Paul Lawrie Matchplay Championship at Murcar attracted just 11,000 over the whole week. The turnout for the Women’s British Open at Turnberry, which was staged at the same time, was hardly vast either while events like the Scottish Senior Open and the free to enter Scottish Hydro Challenge attract modest smatterings. The lucrative Dunhill Links Championship, meanwhile, can sometimes make One Man and his Dog look like a De Mille epic.

The one tournament that bucked the trend last year was the Ladies Scottish Open. Having moved from Archerfield to Dundonald Links, the first day of play at the Ayrshire venue attracted around 3000 spectators, more than the entire week’s turn-out at its previous home.

As the cradle of the game, Scotland is always going to have a jam-packed itinerary of golfing events but that in itself breeds its own problems. There is so much going on, and so much championed, we’ve probably reached saturation point.

At a time when Government funding is being pumped into the game to promote professional events around the country as part of the Ryder Cup legacy, those in charge of the purse strings probably looked at the footage from Castle Stuart with hands over their eyes.

Another dip in figures at Royal Troon this week will provide more food for thought.