‘Twas the column before Christmas, when all thro' The Herald house not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. Which was bad news for this scribe because you need to wiggle and press an activated mouse to get the computer booted up to start winkling out this ruddy back page pantomime. Yes, it’s all getting very festive in the tinsel-draped, bauble-laden engine room of newspaper production. “Bring me flesh and bring me wine, bring me pine logs hither,” bellowed the sports editor, as he looked out on the Feast of Steven Thompson’s forthcoming column. Either that, or he was just putting in his usual demands to the office canteen. “Yonder peasant, who is he?”, added ye who must be obeyed. “Why, it’s your golf correspondent coming back in after a fairly robust Christmas lunch,” responded his deputy as he gazed at a shuffling, shambolic figure who looked like he had drank the winter fuel let alone gather it. Thank goodness the going was deep and crisp and even.

In the topsy-turvy world of golf, meanwhile, there have been plenty of ups, downs, thrills, spills, footers and plooters in 2016. The four men’s majors were won by four first-timers, we had a thrilling denouement to the Open that will be talked about even when we are all living on the outer rings of Saturn in 3019, the boys and the good ladies made Olympic golf an uplifting success despite all the grumbling and grousing at its inclusion, the Ryder Cup engaged and enthralled with its rip-roaring, rambunctious tumult and the failure of Muirfield to vote in women members generated the kind of indignant fist-shaking that could have made dents in the very air that surrounds us.

Closer to home, there were choppings and changings at Scottish Golf as the newly amalgamated governing body set sail with Hamish Grey at the helm only for the former chief executive of the now defunct Scottish Golf Union to abandon ship after a couple of months. It was hardly the ideal start to this brave new dawn. Eventually the post was filled by Blane Dodds, the chairman of Tennis Scotland. Dodds is still settling into the hot seat but after 12 weeks in the post he has already made some telling moves.

“There have been cut-backs in Scottish Golf, so what I saw as my first job was to stop that,” he said. “If we are trying to grow the game how can we do that if there are a lot of cut-backs? Performance programmes, events, club support, participation programmes? They were under threat. I have basically reduced our expenditure level; all the costs about running the organisation rather than the cost of actually running the programmes that are at the frontline of what we do.” Bang goes the lavish lunches for the golf writers then?

Dodds knows there is no “magic wand” and the wider, long-standing issues affecting golf – time, expense, falling memberships, demands on squeezed leisure time, getting juniors into the game – continue to hang about like the sand-wedge of Damocles. In a competitive market place, government funding is also down, despite the huge economic benefits golf as a whole brings to the nation that gave the world the game.

Scotland has over 200,000 golf club members. Research suggests there are over 300,000 regular adults golfers and over 750,000 occasional dabblers in the game. “Are the clubs fulfilling the community need and want? The answer to that is maybe no,” suggested Dodds as he mulled over the figures that demonstrate a potential for membership growth in an era of unattached, nomadic players.

A keen golfer, Dodds knows the value of icons shining at the peak of their pursuits. The Murray brothers? Gordon Reid? Scotland’s tennis players have certainly done their bit to inspire, excite and engage this year as they clambered to the top of the world order. With the exception of the sterling Russell Knox, it’s been a largely hum-drum season in the upper reaches of the golfing scene for the Scots. The average age of a Scottish golfer on the men’s European Tour is 37. We are crying out for some new faces. In 2016, Scotland’s male amateurs won national titles in Australia and South Africa and successfully defended the European Team crown. “We’ve got the talent, the problem is to convert that into the professional game,” noted Dodds. “We need a Colin Montgomerie, we need someone.”

The problematic, stumbling transition that our young golfers make from the amateur game to the professional ranks remains a bamboozling puzzle that causes head-scratching and teeth-grinding on an annual basis. There are many questions but not a lot of answers. Perhaps good old Santa will deliver some from his bag of tricks? He’s about the only person we’ve not sought the advice of, after all.