There's been so much bleak, negative news floating about golf of late that this correspondent has taken to reading a burgeoning pile of eviction notices just to raise the morale.

Vijay Singh's dabble with deer antler spray, Tiger Woods' dodgy drop, Sergio Garcia's fried chicken faux pas and a prolonged palaver over anchoring that may yet end up in the courts?

We've become so conditioned to grim tidings concerning the Royal & Ancient game that, if I switched on the television and saw a report saying every golf course in the country had been forced to close, accompanied by footage of sobbing workmen bulldozing clubhouses into shattered, twisted heaps, I'd just shrug my shoulders and say: "Aye well, it's probably for the best."

Golf could do with a pick-me-up if we're being honest. A sport considered holier than others has taken a bit of a pummelling over the past few months. In this tranquil, "quiet please" pursuit, the din created by the halo slipping off and clattering on the floor has shattered the peace.

On this side of the Atlantic, in particular, it has been decidedly downbeat. Eight months on from the Miracle of Medinah, when European golf reached a new level of splendour with that remarkable Ryder Cup win amid a riot of popping champagne corks, it's all gone slightly flat. Ian Poulter has struggled to scale those Medinah heights, Luke Donald has lost the relentless consistency that was his trademark and Lee Westwood, who had last month's BMW PGA Championship by the scruff of the neck, only to surrender meekly when in control on the final day, continues to add more mental scars to a mind that already has been wounded by failures and near misses in the biggest events down the years.

Even the golden boy, Rory McIlroy, has lost his lustre. His toils and troubles have been well-documented and the rummage around to find the level of performance he showed last year, when he topped the money lists on both sides of the Atlantic and captured his second major title at the US PGA Championship, grows ever more desperate.

Apart from top 10s in the WGC Cadillac Championship and The Players' Championship, as well as a second behind the rampant Scot, Martin Laird, in April's Texas Open, the 24-year-old Northern Irishman continues to muddle on through the campaign.

With the season moving into the peak months, there is little evidence to suggest that McIlroy will claw himself out of the mire any time soon, even though he has tended to be a player who is at his most dangerous when being questioned by others. With off-course issues rumbling on in the background – the cloak-and-dagger affair surrounding his management company, from which he appears to have spilt, remains shrouded in mystery – McIlroy's mind must be a mish-mash of swirling thought processes. It's hardly the ideal situation to be in heading to a major championship, when the mental challenge is at its most rigorous.

Throw in a grouping with Adam Scott, the Masters champion, and one Tiger Woods for the first two rounds of this week's US Open at Merion near Philadelphia and the scrutiny will be unflinching. It will be the first time McIlroy and Woods have played together in a major championship. For all the talk of the top two players in the world stoking up a rivalry on a par with the titanic Watson and Nicklaus tussles of yesteryear, the eagerly anticipated contest within a contest remains a non-contest, however. Woods – his controversial Masters drop aside – has sparkled this season with four majestic victories and has left McIlroy wheezing on behind.

At storied Merion, an old-style architectural marvel where history is made and celebrated, perhaps Woods, who has been stuck on 14 major wins since his last US Open success in 2008, will write a new chapter in his own story and renew the assault on Nicklaus' record haul of 18. With the off-course issues that have enveloped the game in 2013, this week's championship will at least bring the focus back on to the course, quite literally.

In an era when courses are stretched to eye-watering distances, and turbo-charged balls are thundered off the tee by drivers with heads the size of the state of Pennsylvania, Merion is a throwback to a different time. At 6996 yards, the famed East course is short by modern-day standards and its old school challenges will ask questions of creativity, imagination and accuracy.

Tight, firm and fast is the USGA's ideal set-up but the lingering remnants of tropical storm Andrea, which continues to give the venue a right good drooking, has certainly rained on the parade and threatened to soften the defences, exposing the course to a potentially devastating birdie barrage.

Then again, this old lady of American golf may just have a few surprises up her sleeve. Whatever the outcome in the second major of the year, there will be plenty of talking points on the course. And that would be good news.