In these opinionated times, it seems the only way to get on in life is by bawling your version of events louder than the person standing next to you.

It's all "if you ask me" this and "I think you'll find" that. Pretty soon, the tut-tutting, teeth grinding and general harrumphing has created such an excruciating din, it makes you want to shear off your ears and hurl them into the sea.

Last week in St Andrews, those of us with our aural appendages still intact were made to sit up and listen as Peter Dawson, the chief executive of the Royal & Ancient, emerged from the trenches and had his lengthy say on the issue of single-sex golf clubs, much to the chagrin of many who would like to storm the doors of the governing body's St Andrews HQ and demand equal opportunities for all. Like a trip on the Glasgow underground, this whole affair just keeps birling round and round and, come this July's Open at men-only Muirfield, the drums of war will probably have reached fever pitch again before it all settles down and something else comes along to grab the attention.

Everybody remembers last summer, when that green-blazered brigade across the water at Augusta National announced that a pair of their jackets would be doled out to two of America's most powerful women. You needed an industrial-sized digger to drive around the world scooping up the jaws that had plummeted to the floor.

In the fraught aftermath of that decision, we had the likes of the former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the sports minister Hugh Robertson and the culture secretary Maria Miller leaping on the soap box and expressing a general dismay that the R&A remains an all-boys club while calling for those men-only institutions like Muirfield, Royal Troon and Royal St George's to be stripped of the honour of hosting the Open. Pretty soon, there was a bandwagon of quite terrifying proportions rumbling along, gobbling up willing members.

Of course, it's these figures of the points-scoring political scene who will probably be quoted in a press release this summer saying "we are delighted that the Open at Muirfield will generate £70m to the local economy of Edinburgh and East Lothian." Nothing sways opinion quite like a big injection of cash.

It's easy to get swept along on the tidal wave of popular belief and knee-jerk reaction and, in a modern world where you have to apologise in advance for just about every action, the fear factor of saying the wrong thing is almost overwhelming while the pressure to do what is perceived to be the right thing is unrelenting.

In many quarters, the R&A has been painted as this misogynist and insular bunch of wobbly-jowled gin swillers and that buoyant band of defiant do-gooders, the kind that get an honest game of conkers banned from the school playground and manage to relabel a failed exam as a "deferred success", are having a field day.

Yet there's a sizeable proportion of the golfing fraternity who can't really get themselves worked up into a lather about the whole topic and the widespread assumption that members of the fairer sex are turned off the game by such establishments tends to be rather sweeping.

Last weekend, for instance, as Troon Ladies and Royal Troon held another successful Helen Holm Scottish Open Strokeplay Championship, a brief poll of the topic was greeted with a general shrugging of the shoulders, from the new generation of young lassies that were competing in the event to those mature matriarchs of the ladies' membership that remain quite happy to have their "own territory".

A rapid resolution to the long-running palaver involving the amalgamation of the Scottish Golf Union and the Scottish Ladies Golf Association seems to rouse the senses more. Outsiders peering in and judging from afar tend to think that golf is a completely closed shop and as archaic as a horse-drawn plough, but accessibility has never been greater.

Amid the frenzy of ill-feeling towards golf's top brass, it can be easily forgotten that a considerable chunk of a £5m war chest accumulated from the Open is ploughed back into the game at a variety of levels across the globe. From the £½m grant that goes to the Golf Foundation, a charity committed to introducing youngsters to the game, to the bursars scheme for students; the sizeable sum spent on golfers with disabilities and special needs to the backing of new initiatives like the recently launched Paul Lawrie Scottish Ladies' Open Tour.

Dawson and his cronies are not likely to be press-ganged into overnight change. We all know that golf doesn't work that way but you wouldn't be surprised if the R&A unveiled plans for a woman member when we least expect it.

It certainly wouldn't do them any harm and, in these times of raised voices, rampant reaction and an onslaught of opinion, perhaps then, we can all enjoy a quiet life.