Have you ever been blethering away to someone and they'll lob in the phrase 'it is what it is'?

This correspondent is regularly bamboozled, dumbfoonert and left twiddling his hair in confusion like Stan Laurel trying to fathom out his tax code when various professionals golfers, raking over the debris of a fairly hum-drum round, conclude their summing up with the aforementioned nugget. One even trotted out the line 'it is what it is, and that's what it is,' to a bewildered posse of golf writers who gazed confusingly at their notes like cavemen staring at the controls of a helicopter before muttering to themselves, 'so what the hell is it then?' According to highly qualified psycho-thingymebob folk who can read into these things, 'it is what it is' can indicate an acceptance of complexity and ambiguity or can illustrate an acceptance of limitations. With golfers it's probably just a case of 'sod this, I'm sick of speaking to you lot now'.

What the BMW PGA Championship is, meanwhile, remains something of a head scratcher. It is, in one sense, a cherished, lucrative and popular showpiece at an iconic venue that is always eagerly anticipated. On the other, it is a championship that has had to endure its fair share of negative press. The fact that a handful of the European Tour's leading lights, like Sergio Garcia, Henrik Stenson and Ian Poulter, continue to stay away from the championship remains a sizeable bone of contention. Poulter has made no secret of his lack of fondness for the West course - he's missed the cut in eight of his 13 appearances there - but you wouldn't pull out of the Open if you weren't that fond of, say, Royal St George's.

Poulter gets cut a bit of slack due to his forthcoming role as tournament host at October's British Masters. Quietly, though, the heid honchos at the European Tour must have been seething when they glimpsed his name in the upper reaches of the leaderboard during a PGA Tour event at Colonial the same weekend as their own flagship event is sailing along. In these money-soaked times of global opportunity, the top brass on the world order are, essentially, independent contractors who are free to dip their bread in whatever gravy boat comes along. As Graeme McDowell, another player with a fairly tempestuous relationship with Wentworth, said last week, "it's hard to tell a self-employed golfer that he must or should play in a certain event." Of course, there is the strong argument that players have a moral duty to support the tour that gave them a leg up in the first place. Amid all this scheduling and globe-trotting, sometimes it comes down to doing the right thing.

Wentworth and the European Tour both have plenty to ponder, as will the Surrey venue's new Chinese owners. The negative press that followed criticism of the greens from Justin Rose and Luke Donald during last week's event will have gone down like a sack of spanners. That kind of grumble about the putting surfaces is almost becoming an annual gripe and there are major decisions to be made about the way forward. Of course, Byeong-hun An, the eventual winner of the crown following his Sunday stroll, didn't seem to mind about the putting surfaces as he eased to a six shot triumph with a 21-under tally.

But when some of Europe's most marketable faces are sporting the kind of gloomy fizzogs you'd tend to find in a bloodhound sanctuary, some reassurances need to be made before the patience of these powerful, influential campaigners wears too thin. In the perfectly conditioned world in which these fellas operate on a week-to-week basis, the blemishes tend to get under the skin and irritate.

Rory McIlroy, the defending champion and world No 1 who missed the cut by the length of the driveway to one of those elaborate Wentworth mansions, cut a largely forlorn figure that was part fatigue caused by a rigorous schedule and part frustration with a West course that, with the exception of 2014, has been a fairly unhappy hunting ground for him. With the likes of Martin Kaymer expressing a desire to see the championship moved to a later date in the schedule - a switch that would be a mind-mangling logistical hassle given the tightness of the global diary - it makes you realise just what a strong position our own Scottish Open is in. The field, including McIlroy, Phil Mickelson, Rickie Fowler (who confirmed his entry on Monday), Rose, McDowell and others, is better than just about anything on the tour and its slot in the calendar, just a week before the Open Championship, remains a huge bargaining tool and makes it a highly alluring proposal. Like BMW with the PGA, the Scottish Open has a powerful, loyal backer in Aberdeen Asset Management and by the time the 2018 edition comes round, the championship's purse will have grown to a huge £4 million. The PGA will always remain the tour's flagship but the Scottish Open continues to make sizeable waves as it sails up alongside.