It's been a busy old spell.
A Commonwealth Games here, a World Pipe Band Championship there, a referendum everywhere. It's a good job Scotland knocked back the opportunity to shoehorn the lucrative Cribbage & Tiddlywinks International Jamboree into this frenzied schedule of auspicious occasions or we would have all been crippled by event fatigue while wheezing and spluttering our way up to Gleneagles for the Ryder Cup like a jiggered old shire horse pulling a cart of oversized Victorian rivets.
It's the global golfing thoroughbreds that are on show in Perthshire this week. And it should be quite a show. Isn't it amazing how quickly the years drift by? Back in 2001, when it was announced that Scotland would be staging the Royal & Ancient game's greatest team tussle, your fresh-faced correspondent gazed at his smooth, wrinkle-free features in the mirror and muttered 'crikey, by 2014 I'll probably be some wizened auld prune with a face like a haunted mine shaft'. Thirteen years down the line, I've surprised myself . . . I look even worse.
When Scotland lost out to Celtic cousins Wales in the race to host the 2010 match, there was much agonising and teeth-gnashing north of the border. The Welsh bid, bankrolled by the kind of lavish, money-no-object extravagance that would have made a Babylonian prince look like a fingerless glove-wearing miser, led to Celtic Manor being completely overhauled by the chequebook of owner and entrepreneur Terry Matthews. "We should have been told at the start that the biggest chequebook would win," was a familiar lament being uttered by those involved with the Scottish proposal.
In hindsight, of course, another four years of waiting have only been beneficial in that they allowed Gleneagles to revamp, fine-tune, motivate and co-ordinate a vast operation. With each Ryder Cup that has passed, on both sides of the Atlantic, over the past decade or so there have been bountiful opportunities to observe and learn from various experiences. A global recession during that period only served to illustrate the fact that it was probably better to be second, as it were, on the European list of hosts.
This week's showpiece is a multi-million-pound bonanza that will, once again, push Scotland into the spotlight of the world sporting stage. Once the last putt has dropped and the golf writers been frogmarched off the premises, the work to keep building on the rewards that can be reaped will continue. The cautionary tales are abundant. Last week, it was announced the Wales Open will drop off the European Tour schedule. It was devised as part of the successful Ryder Cup bid but Matthews has decided not to renew the contract with estimates suggesting he pumped £40m into it. Like Ireland after the 2006 Ryder Cup, the hangover continues to linger for the last host of the biennial bunfight.
On the women's front, the Wales Ladies Championship of Europe, another event built up as part of the successful Ryder Cup bid, withered on the vine while the Welsh event on the second-tier men's Challenge Tour also bit the dust. This latest loss of the Wales Open, an event which never quite garnered enough support from the top players, is a significant blow to British golf in general.
Here in this neck of the golfing woods, we are extremely fortunate that there are highly enthusiastic, powerful backers keeping things buoyant. Whatever your thoughts on the bold Alex Salmond, there can be no denying his passion for the game and it can only be hoped that the next person at the helm continues to recognise the huge importance of supporting golf in this country.
Salmond's intervention, and the lucrative alliance with Aberdeen Asset Management, saved the Scottish Open and it is now going from strength to strength. The Women's British Open has backing through to 2019 - and will be played here four times in that period - while the Ladies Scottish Open was recently given a new prime slot in the schedule, the week before the British event, and an increase in prize money through a support package that is committed through to 2018. More importantly, the junior initiative of Clubgolf, which has introduced some 300,000 youngsters to the game, remains an integral part of the golfing landscape.
"This support is not stopping the day after we celebrate the next European Ryder Cup win at Gleneagles," said Salmond a couple of years ago. That victory would be nice, of course. Ensuring Scottish golf, as a whole, continues to thrive in the future would be nicer still.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article