Things were much better in the good old days.

Unless, of course, you lived in the really old days, when life was all dark and satanic and supper consisted of a roasted rat on a stick washed down with a ladleful of your own tears.

Nothing makes the eyes well up quite like a nostalgic look back to those days of yore and, in this Royal & Ancient game of golf, we are never done reflecting on how we used to live. Last week at Gleneagles, a gaggle of Scotland's scribblers enjoyed a meet and greet with Brian Mair, the new secretary of the Scottish PGA. A bubbly, buoyant character, Mair certainly doesn't lack enthusiasm for his new role. The challenge now is to generate that same kind of enthusiasm for the Tartan Tour on a wider scale.

When you're parked in front of the box watching a cast list of global superstars scrapping away for a chunk of the $9.5m on offer in The Players' Championship, it's easy to forget about the professional scene at a domestic level. It's the same old game – players trying to get a dimpled bundle of toil and trouble into a small hole on a green – but it remains a world away.

This season, the Scottish PGA Championship, the Tartan Tour's flagship event, will celebrate its 105th anniversary but ask your average golf enthusiast who's playing in it, when it's on and who the defending champion is and you'll probably be greeted with the kind of blank stare usually reserved for a dog that's just been presented with a Sudoku puzzle.

There was a time, of course, when the national championship was one of the top dogs on the Scottish calendar and the list of past champions illustrates its majesty; John Panton, Eric Brown, Harry Bannerman, Bernard Gallacher, Sam Torrance, Sandy Lyle, Brian Barnes, Andrew Coltart, Paul Lawrie. It is a stellar roll of honour befitting an event which used to attract thousands of spectators, particularly during a golden era in the 1980s at Dalmahoy, and was given plenty of airtime on television.

Nowadays, the championship is lucky to attract one man, let alone his dug. With a saturated market and a jam-packed schedule, you can't expect tournaments just to plough on as before. In these times of relentless promotion and PR, the PGA has been found wanting, while those at Gleneagles, where the championship has been held since 2001, have done little to bolster the championship's status away from the actual staging of it.

Yes, they have shown admirable commitment by giving the event a solid base and a guaranteed prize fund but, let's face it, with the multi-million pound gravy train that is the Ryder Cup hurtling into the Perthshire resort next year, the little old Scottish PGA Championship has almost been held in camera.

Is the phrase "going through the motions" too harsh? A few years back, this correspondent was out at the leaderboard taking a note of the incoming scores and a curious passer-by ambled on to the scene and asked "and what is this tournament?" That essentially summed up the depths into which it had been plunged on the profile front. People won't come if they don't know it's on and, in my eyes, there has never been any evidence to suggest moves have been made to actually promote the championship, encourage spectators and give the players a sense they are competing in an event of tradition and prestige.

The golf reporter can only do so much. The fact that this year's contest will start on a Sunday – July 28 for your diary – is another damaging blow and is the third different date in three years. It just feels as if it has been tossed into the schedule and, given that the Senior Open at Birkdale finishes that day, the Scottish Amateur Championship begins on the Monday and the Ricoh Women's British Open is on at St Andrews later that same week, the general coverage will be modest.

It's a shame that such a proud, cherished championship has drifted out of the golfing consciousness.

AND ANOTHER THING

He's back . . . again. Tiger Woods' fourth win of the season, in The Players' Championship, had everyone falling over themselves with excitement. The dreaded phrase "he's truly back to his best" that is spouted after each win is becoming a bit trite now. The sooner he wins another major and actually proves that, the better it will be for the general sanity of the golfing media.

With all the Sawgrass focus on Woods and the petty twitterings of the slumping Sergio Garcia, Martin Laird, joint second a year ago, crept quietly into the hunt again with a superb closing round of 67 – equal best of the day – to share fifth place. Having arrested an alarming slide down the world rankings with a win in the Valero Texas Open last month, Laird's salvage operation continues and the Scot is now up to 53rd on the global order.

Woods may be the comeback king but, from a Scottish perspective, it's nice to see Laird on the road to recovery, too.