If you’ve ever worked from home, you’ll know that there are occasions when it can be about as mentally nourishing as a baby’s rattle.

I mean, that sentence that you’ve just read there was the laboured, unimaginative product of about two hours spent gazing forlornly at the blank screen of my laptop during a prolonged period of crippling inactivity.

There are probably prison inmates who get more creative inspiration ticking off the days of their sentence with a shard of chalk on their cell wall than I do sitting hunched at my desk in the sitting room.

In fact, my latest bout of inertia was so stifling, I half expected the actual laptop to break the weary silence and suddenly say, "can you please do something as this is getting dreadfully awkward". It was like being on a bad date.

As you can see, though, we got there in the end and another back page column, which is supposed to inform and entertain the nation but instead inflicts itself on the populace like a particularly violent strain of norovirus, awaits your consumption. Or perhaps your condemnation?

What awaits the good folk of Hollandbush Golf Club, meanwhile, is a decision on the future of their cherished facility.

South Lanarkshire Council’s budget meeting is scheduled for tomorrow and the course in Lesmahagow has been earmarked for closure, along with a whole host of village halls, libraries and community centres in and around the parish.

The savings the council needs to make runs into the kind of millions that the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) dishes out at a LIV Golf prize-giving ceremony. When it comes to fixing potholes, meanwhile, you could say most councils are taking, well, the PIF. But I digress.

By all accounts, Hollandbush, one of six clubs operated by South Lanarkshire Leisure & Culture, has a robust, loyal and passionate membership. According to those involved with the popular municipal just off the M74, “the course has never looked better, never been busier and the clubhouse is thriving.”

A recent post on the club’s social media page called for the local community to “bombard” councillors in a rousing rallying cry that could’ve featured a bugle call and fixed bayonets, while a public consultation has generated considerable support for the retention of the facility ahead of the big meeting. Whether this call to arms has the desired effect remains to be seen.

Filling vast financial black holes tends to be a ruthless old business. There will be plenty of folk out there who would probably sooner see a golf course sacrificed rather than, say, a library or a swimming pool. People have their own leisure preferences, after all.

In this dire state, something, or indeed a few things, will have to give. Community hubs, whether for golfing, reading, dooking or simply blethering, suffer as a result.

Not that long ago, when the devastation of Covid kicked in, the shadow of closure loomed large over Hollandbush, as it did with many clubs and courses throughout the game’s cradle. When, however, golf became the pastime of the pandemic and enjoyed an unexpected but hugely welcome surge in popularity, it was given a new lease of life.

Amid the clouds of Covid, there was a silver lining. Golf provided a welcome sanctuary during that wretched spell. It was a soothing retreat for body and mind. At a time when bodies and minds continue to be ravaged by rises in obesity, dependency and depression, the threat to any leisure facility, not just golfing ones, is always sorely felt.

We all know that some municipal courses have had a trying time in recent years. Once valued resources have withered on the vine and many affordable, accessible routes into the game that Scotland gave to the world have been locked up, fenced off and choked by the weeds of neglect.

The R&A bought Lethamhill, the old cooncil course on the south bank of Hogganfield Loch, and transformed it into a pioneering, multi-million pound, come-all-ye family facility. But the R&A can’t buy every municipal course that’s struggling. Now, there’s an idea, eh?

Over in the east, there’s talk that Caird Park in Dundee, once the busiest ‘muni’ in Europe and the place where Sandy Lyle’s uncle, Walter, was a pro back in the 1950s, could be set for the chop.

Down in the south of the UK, I was reading that councillors are being asked if a nine-hole track in the seaside town of Torquay is the “most appropriate use” of space after a series of wayward clatters and batters damaged the roof of the Grade 1-listed Spanish Barn which sits in front of the course.

Funnily enough, I often curse and mutter to myself during a round of pitiful ineptitude that I couldn’t hit the barn let alone the barn door with my driver.

I wonder if I’d have more luck hitting the bloomin’ barn roof with one of my woeful hoiks and howks? If the Torquay councillors get their way, I may not get the chance.

What are the chances, meanwhile, of South Lanarkshire Council sparing Hollandbush? Well, all eyes will be on tomorrow’s budget meeting and what decisions emerge from it.

In competitive golf, everybody wants to make the cut. For all those who hold Hollandbush dear, though, this is one cut they hope to miss.