The thing about going away on holiday these days is that the pesky progress of technology means that everybody comes along with you.

Text messages, emails, phone calls. There's no ruddy peace. Thanks to my increasingly doddering incompetence, though, this correspondent merrily trotted off for a week to the French Riviera without my mobile phone.

It was like being transported back to those tranquil times of yore when your sole status update consisted of a slightly dog eared postcard that arrived two days after you had returned and was scribbled with a few hum-drum haverings about a trip to a crumbling monastery, the weather being fine but getting cooler at the weekend and how you'd met a nice couple from Shropshire during a tour of some fusty catacombs.

As I emerged from the shimmering sea with the grace, poise and head-turning sultriness of Ursula Andress in Dr No, I felt a great sense of liberation as I waddled bare footed to the beach side cafe bar free from the shackles of 24/7 contact. "Croque Monsieur?" asked the waiter. "No, it's just my dooky is a bit tight," I replied gingerly.

Back at the coal face of text messages, emails and phone calls, the holiday is like a distant memory. Rather like the good old days of Tiger Woods. Another major championship looms this week and, once again, there will be considerable focus plunged on the ailing former world No 1. Folk must be getting tired of this surely? Or do we still have an unquenchable thirst for almost freak show levels of ghoulish voyeurism? Probably. Watching Woods these days is a bit like sitting across from the Bearded Lady and the Elephant Man having a cosy date in a restaurant. You can't help but stare. Of course, it's maddening that in these enthralling, exciting times of Rory McIlroy, Jordan Spieth and Rickie Fowler, young, fresh-faced talents who will carry golf forward into a new era, we remain obsessed by a bloke huffing and puffing his way to last place, as was the case for Woods at The Memorial recently. But that's the way it is. We love the rise and rise but we salivate at the decline and fall. It's a fickle world.

Have a trawl through the internet and you'll find plenty of folk revelling in Woods's demise. The keyboard warriors will come over all holier than thou and judgemental about his antics, his club throwing, his cursing and his extra-curricular activities. Sympathy is in short supply yet, purely from a golfing point of view, there can be no pleasure in watching one of the game's greatest players floundering and thrashing away in a hopeless, haggard state of despair.

On and on it goes, though and Woods keeps putting himself through the wringer. The scrutiny of his game under tournament conditions remains remorseless and lays bare all his failings while he continues to talk up his chances of winning with the kind of delusional statements that used to be the reserve of Comical Ali.

There continues to be no sign of any improvement - his 85 at The Memorial saw him hit rock bottom - while a trip to his happy hunting ground of St Andrews for next month's Open could potentially be another harrowing experience in an increasingly long list of haunting episodes. Woods won the Open there in 2000 by eight shots and by five in 2005 but, should he find himself muddling away in the margins this time and simply making up the numbers, it would be another savage dunt to an already shredded morale. Woods can always draw on history for his inspiration but even those fond memories of courses where he conquered are becoming clouded by the fog of futility and an uncertainty over his game that used to be so natural but now seems paralysed by analysis and hampered by technical footerings. Before the Open, he's still got this week's US Open to get through. Will it be more hands over the eyes stuff? Who knows? We'll probably all be watching though.

AND ANOTHER THING

"The Scottish Open wants to be here forever, they think this is the best course they've ever seen," said Donald Trump with his usual, whispering modesty on the yet to be confirmed reports that the domestic showpiece will head to his Balmedie links in 2017, 2019 and 2020.

There is no denying the quality and the strength of examination of Trump's course and for a place that's reportedly lost £3.5 million in its first two years, a regular event broadcast live in the US would no doubt help the coffers. The great shame, of course, would be losing the ethos that all those involved with the Scottish Open were so keen to promote; that of rotating the event around the country.

And what if the course simply plays too tough? The Scottish Open has done a fine job in attracting the world's best but the last thing the top players want the week before the Open itself is a brutal links battering. Player power can work both ways ... and those players could vote with their feet if it doesn't suit.