Well, how's your dry, dieting January going?

If it's anything like mine it will have been about as successful as Icarus's maiden flight as you plummet down off the wagon while landing face first in a pile of cakes, pies and microwaveable comfort swill.

Who would have thought there was a meal between breakfast and brunch eh? Of course, the weather hasn't helped the detoxing process. Every morning the same; a dispiriting, drookit outlook of overwhelming bleakness that's a bit like waking up in a leaking, medieval torture chamber.

While we peer forlornly out at the endlessly grey, laden sky, with clouds that are now so sodden they must have moss growing on the inside of them, the world of golf at least offers us tantalising glimpses of that big fiery orb we know as the sun.

South Africa and Hawaii last weekend, Abu Dhabi this coming week. Stick Sky TV on and you can be transported to far flung places at the push of a button. Stick the BBC on these days, meanwhile, and about the only hint of golf you'll get is an image of a mashie niblick unearthed by Bruce Forsyth during an episode of Celebrity Cash in the Attic. Or so it feels like.

The Beeb's latest contract with the Royal & Ancient for covering the Open Championship, a deal which runs into a 60th year at St Andrews this summer, expires after the 2016 showpiece at Royal Troon and reports are, once again, suggesting that the relationship will end for good.

The big hitters at Sky are waiting in the wings, putting together a money-soaked package that will be as mouth-wateringly enticing to the R&A heid honchos as that staple clubhouse fare of a slootery poached egg on mince and a large glass of Sancerre.

Three years ago, Peter Dawson, the chief executive of the R&A, expressed his concerns at the way the BBC approached the coverage of golf in the wake of a particularly cringe worthy Masters in which Michael Vaughan (yes, Michael Vaughan the cricketer not golfer) bumbled his way through a series of awkward post round interviews with bewildered golfers (yes, golfers not cricketers).

Only last year, when the question arose again, Dawson gave another sizeable hint of the R&A's thinking. "The value of golf rights has accelerated dramatically, particularly in the US over the last 12 months," he said. "That's perhaps a bigger item in the equation than it might otherwise have been."

Given that the United States Golfing Association, the R&A's counterparts on the other side of the Atlantic, has agreed a huge $1.2 billion deal with Fox for the next 12 years, you can see why the R&A would be tempted to leap from the terrestrial ship and on to the buoyant vessel of satellite broadcasting. And who could blame them?

The BBC's virtual abandonment of golf in recent years has been hard to accept, particularly when a series of players from the United Kingdom - led by the youthful, influential and inspiring figure of Rory McIlroy - have been making major impacts on the global stage. Not to worry. We can console ourselves with the fact that 20 odd million quid gets lavished on excruciating, shrieking, clapping sing-athons like The Voice.

This season, like last year, you'll get just 10 days of live golf on the BBC. All four championship days of the Open, all four days of the Women's Open (a deal which also runs out in 2016) and the Saturday and Sunday of the Masters. Of course, the ace in the pack for the BBC is that its Open coverage is uninterrupted and constant while free to air to a large and varied audience. Would the R&A be willing to sacrifice that embrace?

They may well be if it means vast sums tumble into the coffers and allows them to increase the already significant finances they pour into a variety of worldwide golfing projects. Money talks and the R&A's cherished role as guardians of the game depends on it.

As some of the governing body's biggest commercial partners expressed a growing uneasiness with its male-only membership, it was inevitable that change to that policy would come, as it did last September. Like a club hacker trying to match a McIlroy drive, the BBC has fallen well behind as far as golf coverage is concerned. In these changing times, the R&A may feel it's time for another major change.

AND ANOTHER THING . . .

The fact that Rory McIlroy has finally committed to playing in this month's Dubai Desert Classic is an encouraging sign. The tournament finishes just two days before he is to appear in court for a square up with his former management company.

Last Friday, McIlroy scored something of an early legal victory when the said firm were refused orders allowing them to inspect the world No 1's old mobile phones and other devices ahead of the case in Dublin.

In the season that he aims for a career grand slam, fevered observers have been working themselves into a fankle about the potential disruption the hearing could have on McIlroy's majesty. By teeing-up in Dubai just days before the high court showdown, perhaps the only person not worrying themselves into a lather is McIlroy himself.