What’s the purpose of new technology in 2018? That’s right, it’s to make an appliance you got a mere three or four years ago look like something from 1973 as things go from cutting edge to antiquated in the time it takes you to roll a smock through a hand-cranked mangle.

This correspondent, for instance, has a mobile phone which does the things that a modern phone should do – texting, surfing the web, holding human civilization under a tyrannical rule – but, according to my gizmo-savvy peers, just doesn’t do that particular stuff as, well, modern as it should do.

So what are you left with? That’s right again. A peculiarity of this gadget-obsessed age which now resembles a clunking, lumpen contraption that William Woollard would have poked, prodded and pondered over on an early edition of Tomorrow’s World.

Life rattles on a thunderous rate, doesn’t it? And if you don’t move with it, then you end up getting swamped by a vast array of tangled flexes, obsolete chargers and archaic charging adapters.

Here in the world of golf, there will be a significant move for the BMW PGA Championship next year when it is dunted from its traditional May slot to late September as part of a wider re-jigging of the golfing diary which will see all the men’s majors done and dusted by July – the Open will be the last one – and the FedEx Play-offs on the PGA Tour concluding in August.

Most of the players at the top end of the game have welcomed this shuffling of the schedule but the impact it has going forward on the BMW PGA Championship, the $7 million showpiece which tees off the European Tour’s Rolex Series at Wentworth this week, will be interesting.

Let’s face it, the circuit’s flagship event has not had its problems to seek in recent years. Some of Europe’s leading players have regularly bypassed the event amid vehement criticisms of the quality of the West Course while the tour’s chief executive, Keith Pelley, ruffled more feathers than a contretemps in Liberace’s dressing room when he said a couple of years ago that, “I don’t see it as our flagship event” just as he was cheerily championing the merits of the more lucrative Tour Championship in Dubai. It was quite the kick in teeth.

With the US powerhouses of the PGA Tour and the PGA of America generally pulling the strings, the European Tour becomes something of a compliant puppet in this global to-ing and fro-ing and, with the US PGA Championship moving to May next year, there was no way the BMW PGA Championship could remain in its long-standing slot. Golf in the upper echelons of organisation can be riddled with self-interest. Those on the other side of the Atlantic wouldn’t have been particularly concerned with any consequences their actions would have on that lil’ ol’ Tour in Euroland.

There’s a feeling that the BMW PGA Championship, with a shimmering roll of honour that includes the likes of Arnold Palmer, Seve Ballesteros, Tony Jacklin, Nick Faldo, Bernhard Langer and Colin Montgomerie, may now become something of an autumnal afterthought.

On the other side of the coin, of course, plenty have suggested that its later date could help attract more marquee names now that there will be a bit more breathing space and room for manoeuvre on the schedule. The transatlantic tussle to lure in and retain the game’s best players remains a constant battle and one the PGA Tour, with the kind of financial might that makes Warren Buffett look like Bob Cratchit, continues to win hands down. We can only wait and see what unravels in 2019.

Of course, this talk of the European Tour being the poor relations is all relative when you look at the wider financial state of golf on the continent over the next fortnight.

While the men will be competing for a total of $14 million at Wentworth and the forthcoming Italian Open, the Ladies European Tour has a rare tournament on a threadbare schedule worth just £100,000.

Concerns about one event moving from May to September is put into perspective when the women have ongoing anxieties about simply getting enough events to earn a living from.