Back in my country seat at the weekend - and by that I mean my mam's delightful terraced hoose, not some baronial pile plonked amid a sprawling acreage of roaming stags and shuffling serfs - it was clear that there was only one show in town.
Forget the teeth-clenching competitiveness of the Ryder Cup. The furious cut and thrust of the local agricultural show would make the opening nip and tuck foursomes tussles at Gleneagles look about as tense as a meditating Buddhist monk.
A keenly contested battle in the tray bakes, curds and jams section for the Elsie Musgrove Perpetual Challenge Cup? Stern faced, muttering judges poking and caressing a carefully cultivated parsnip? A nail-nibbling entrant peering on anxiously and wondering if they've overdone it with the salt in their butternut squash and chorizo soup? It was all action.
When Wattie Merryweather unexpectedly edged out his rivals to land the rosette for the most ornate hand-carved nibbie, you could have heard a pin drop . . . which was fortunate because there was a pin-dropping competition going on in the adjacent tent.
Yes, it was good to get away from the all-consuming frenzy of the Ryder Cup for a spell, particularly amid the relentless bombardment of bewildering press releases about official partners. Did you know that this year's showpiece will be 'the first zero waste to landfill Ryder Cup in history'? Of course you didn't. Mercifully, there are plenty of other things going on in the world of golf to give us a breather.
This week, the final major on the women's calendar, the Evian Championship, gets underway in France and it will mark the beginning of a professional career for Minjee Lee. The Australian teenager is being tipped as the next big thing in a women's game that seems to produce next big things in regular abundance.
Her rise has been rapid and one that has followed a familiar path. It starts with conquests at a regional, national and international level in the amateur game, it's then followed by a victory over a host of professionals on a domestic tour and then leads to a series of impressive guest appearances among the top brass in the majors. At 18, Lee has signed with global management giants, IMG, and will make her first appearance this week as a member of the paid ranks.
Last weekend in Japan, she signed off her amateur career in fine style when, in partnership with the equally impressive Su-Hyun Oh, she won the World Amateur Team Championship for her country having mounted a final-day charge during which the Australian alliance overhauled a seven-shot deficit.
Lee departed for pastures new as the world No.1 on the amateur rankings, a position that will now be taken up by the 16-year-old Canadian Brooke Henderson, who will no doubt be the next ' big thing' to be snapped up by golf's global powerhouses in the not too distant future.
She may be playing for money for the first time at the Evian, but the major experience will not faze Lee. She has already notched top-25 finishes this season in both the Kraft Nabisco Championship and the US Open.
For that latter event, Lee earned her spot by winning a sectional qualifier by nine shots although her efforts were largely overshadowed by the media hoopla whipped up by Lucy Li, the 11-year-old who also came through a 36-hole shootout and won it by seven strokes. Li's appearance at a major had many feeling uncomfortable about the presence of someone so young in the field.
It wasn't a new phenomenon, of course. Back in 1967, Beverley Klass played in the US Women's Open at the age of 10. The saga of Michele Wie, who was playing against the men in professional events at the age 14, left something of a pall over the women's game and provided many cautionary tales and it is only now, at 24, that she is finding her identity and fulfilling her talent. There are plenty who have followed on behind, and the age bar becomes lower and lower all the time.
Paula Creamer became the youngest winner of an LPGA Tour event at 18 in 2005. Lexi Thompson brought that mark down to 16 in 2011 before Lydia Ko lowered the record to 15 in 2012. Ko, the supremely talented New Zealander, won again at 16 and 17 and has benefited, unlike Wie in her formative years, from a careful, considered nurturing of measured doses in a pressurised environment where expectations weigh heavily.
At 18, Lee is almost a veteran compared to some of the other rising stars of recent years but, in an increasingly youthful women's scene, she will be hoping to be the next player to prove that, if you're good enough, you're old enough.
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