In this business loosely known as sports writing, one can often be farmed out to cover a variety of pursuits and performances far flung from our alleged area of expertise.

Bowls, curling, weightlifting, netball, the West of Scotland Patchwork Quilt Championships . . . you name it, we do it.

Last weekend, your correspondent was spirited off to the swimming at the Royal Commonwealth Pool in Edinburgh and was immediately struck by the sheer warmth of the environment. And by warmth, I mean genuine heat; the kind of smouldering temperature you'd tend to get in those well-known Auld Reekie saunas . . . or so I'm told.

It was the one sporting event of the season where I could finally saunter around nonchalantly in my ill-fitting Speedos without, once again, hearing the words 'sir, can you please leave, you're causing a frightful scene'.

Outrage, disgrace, shambles? No, not insults hurled at me as I waddled about the poolside but phrases used to describe the result of Sunday night's BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award. The fact that Rory McIlroy didn't win - hardly surprising given the Beeb's lamentable golf coverage these days - caused a considerable amount of fist shaking and teeth gnashing but should we really work ourselves into a dreadful lather over a ridiculously hyped palaver that's now as gaudy as Liberace's pyjamas and has been reduced to a fevered public phone-in-a-thon on a par with Strictly Come Dancing?

The fact that racing driver Lewis Hamilton, the eventual winner, turned up with his dug only added to the general oddness of an all-action occasion that could not be more different to the low-key yet dignified affair it used to be in more classy times of yore.

Of course, when dealing with a series of people with talent way out of the ordinary it is difficult to simply say one person is far more deserving of recognition than the other.

There was a general consensus in golfing circles that a McIlroy victory in what is now annoyingly known as SPOTY would be "good for the game" in a wider sense. Getting his hands round a silver plated four-turret lens camera on a plinth, given what he has plundered this year, is not the be-all and end-all but it certainly would have been merited and would, no doubt, have helped in golf's ongoing battle for popularity. As McIlroy himself suggested in the increasingly frenzied build-up to the awards, a win "would transcend across all sports and not just stick to the golf community."

With the Royal & Ancient finally allowing female membership this year, a McIlroy success would have been another good boost on the PR front. Great swathes of the public still view golf as a game of overbearing, elitist stuffiness but the reality, in most cases, could not be more different to that sweeping view. Indeed, if people think of golf as a pursuit solely for the haves instead of the have-nots, then how do you look at Formula One? You can't simply nip out and take it up like you would venture forth and pick up a golf club. The money soaked world of the F1 paddock, and all the big, bold commercialism that attaches itself to the circuit, is far removed from the honest, working class environments of many golf clubs throughout the land.

Other slightly sinister views on McIlroy, particularly on his decision to represent Ireland instead of Great Britain & Northern Ireland at the 2016 Olympics, didn't help either. One reporter writing in a national paper stated that "McIlroy has cast himself away to Ireland for Olympic purposes and, by any reasonable logic, should not pick up one of our national baubles".

It was a throwaway line of eye-rolling ignorance and one that did not even consider the fact that McIlroy had been part of a unified Team Ireland all through his amateur days. Like rugby, that is just the norm. McIlroy came from a working-class background and, in a season of astonishing accomplishment burnished by back-to-back major titles, golf could not have a better figure to inspire a new generation.

The global game has never been stronger but the fact that McIlroy has set himself apart from the rest so dominantly this season only highlights his majesty. Hamilton, essentially, was involved in a two-car race. McIlroy would, no doubt, have cherished the BBC award and his views on developing the game in the wider public were further examples of his broader sense of awareness and duty. The game of golf has been good to McIlroy but he continues to be good for it, SPOTY or no SPOTY.

As Paul McGinley, the European Ryder Cup captain who earned the coach of the year prize, said: "We are lucky to have him."

AND ANOTHER THING

With the kind of detailed planning that made the D-Day landings look like a slap-dash operation mapped out on the back of a beer mat, the USA's much-trumpeted Ryder Cup task force held their first meeting recently. It took them four hours to decide to contact Fred Couples about the vacant captain's position for 2016, a potential appointment most folk had been touting anyway. We now eagerly await the results of the Task Force's 'booze up in a brewery' summit.