You can’t please everybody. This scribe once got a letter from a grumbling reader suggesting that I was “shallow and cheap”.
In these times of cost-cutting, it’s probably better than being deep and expensive.
The message was clear, though. I was viewed as something of a philistine, a notion that was brought home to me recently at a visual arts performance which was so high-brow, the ticket stub even played its own Radio 3 harpsichord recital.
As images of artistic chaos were projected on to a screen, they were accompanied by a musical maelstrom of abstract, atonal absurdities that left reverential onlookers stroking their chins so vigorously they developed a cleft that looked like they had been resting their heads on a snooker cue for days.
As for me? Well, all this discordant, musical avant garde simply reminded me of Les Dawson famously tinkling out an off-tune rendition of Side by Side at the London Palladium.
At least good old Les eventually got the audience singing off the same hymn sheet, which is what the top brass at Scottish Golf will be hoping happens this weekend at the governing body’s AGM. Let’s face it, things have been far from harmonious.
The main item on the agenda will be the increase in the affiliation fee, an issue which has caused considerable hand-wringing ever since Blane Dodds, the former chief executive, proposed hiking the annual levy from £11.25 to £24 as part of an ultimately doomed new strategy.
That figure has now been reduced to £15 as Scottish Golf attempts to stem a financial shortfall caused by a cut in sportscotland funding.
If this doesn’t get the thumbs up, then goodness knows where Scottish Golf turns.
Andrew McKinlay, the recently appointed chief executive, doesn’t start his new role until May and already has the task of winning over a membership which has grown increasingly cynical down the seasons.
“What do they do for us?” remains a long-standing gripe.
There has been a disconnect between the governing body and those it serves for many a year.
This was heightened during the calamitous financial collapse of the Scottish National Golf Centre some 15 years ago and ever since then, clubs and various stakeholders have just about distrusted everything the governing body has done.
Throw in elements of grim resistance to any sort of change among certain club members and you have a fairly fractious alliance.
Of course, the amalgamated Scottish Golf is just two years old but this merry coupling became unhitched during Dodds’ push at a restructure.
In some respects, the new Scottish Golf was just like the old one; tell the membership what they’re doing and attempt to force it through without really engaging with those at the coal face.
When Dodds’ proposal was essentially ripped up, the one good thing to come out of the debris was a national golf conference, in which all walks of golfing life got to air their views in an open forum of discussion, debate and cold, hard figures.
Eleanor Cannon, the chair of Scottish Golf, conceded that this was something that should have been done earlier in an effort to bolster communication and nurture relationships.
It was better late than never, though.
To have a viable future, Scottish Golf has to arrest the alarming slide in club membership with the key to that being an increase in women, families and juniors. In an age of nomadic golfers and societal shifts, though, that’s the kind of uphill struggle that would send alarm bells ringing at the Mountain Rescue.
Scotland has been losing around 5000 members every year over the past decade. Eye-popping keeks into the future indicate that membership fees in 10 years’ time could be around 84 per cent higher than they are now.
Golf is peppered with sobering statistics.
An increase of just £3.75 is hardly a king’s ransom, but Scotland’s club members have to decide if it’s a price worth paying.
The price of doing nothing, meanwhile, could be far greater.
AND ANOTHER THING
It’s not all doom and gloom for our bruised and battered neighbours over the wall after that Murrayfield mauling.
Forget the oval ball game, those clattering the dimpled ba’ continue to make great strides.
Eddie Pepperell’s long overdue win on the European Tour in Qatar was the third by an Englishman on the main circuit this season, while the upwardly mobile Tommy Fleetwood had a chance of knocking off a maiden PGA Tour triumph in Florida.
The nation now has 11 players in the top-100 of the world rankings and seven in the leading 20 of the Race to Dubai.
In golf at least, it’s the Scots who are often finding themselves being sent home to think again . . .
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