Given all the hysterical panting, gasping, shrieking and salivating that was going on at Wimbledon and Lord’s yesterday, you half expected the main movers and shakers here at the Aberdeen Standard Investments Scottish Open to peer up from a tricky eight-footer on the 15th and say ‘how’s the tennis and cricket going?’ They wouldn’t have been the only ones.

In the grand scheme of what was going elsewhere in a frenzied, super Sunday of sport, poor old Benjamin Hebert and Bernd Wiesberger had a pretty tough job on their hands trying to grab the attentions here at The Renaissance. Even spectators at the golf were watching the bloomin’ tennis. Or the cricket. Or both.

With an appallingly late tee-off time – the leading group trotted away at nearly 4pm to suit a pesky but hugely profitable US television deal – it was perhaps inevitable that on a prolonged day of tie-breakers and super-overs at other sporting arenas, the Scottish Open too dragged on into a play-off amid the lengthening shadows of a beautiful East Lothian evening.

Come 9pm, the £900,000 or so first prize belonged to Wiesberger as he somehow managed to triumph at the third play-off hole as title rival Hebert missed two golden chances to win before fluffing his lines for a third time to miss out on a maiden European Tour title.

The leading duo had finished locked on 22-under 262s, a new record low for the Scottish Open. Hebert came barging up the order with a sparking 62 to set the clubhouse standard, but twiddled his thumbs and plootered on the range for over two hours before his involvement in the play-off was confirmed.

It looked like Wiesberger would get the job done in regulation, though, when he holed a 20-footer for birdie at 16 to inch ahead only to miss a short one for bogey on the 17th.

The wobbling Austrian then had to make a jittery seven-footer for par on the last just to get into the play-off. It was Hebert who got the heebie-jeebies in the sudden-death shoot-out, however, with a calamitous series of woeful putts. The former European Amateur champion could at least console himself with an Open place, though.

“Benjamin had me on the first two play-off holes but that is sometimes how golf goes,” said Wiesberger, who notched his sixth tour win and a second of the season.

“It was a tough grind. I didn’t hit my iron shots well and I struggled but I just had to dig deep. If you do that you sometimes get rewarded every now and then.”

As Wiesberger savoured a hard-earned victory, there was an emotional, uplifting twist in the final day tale too as Andrew Johnston, the hirsute, portly Englishman who has acquired a cult status in recent years on both sides of the Atlantic but recently revealed a struggle with his mental health, came roaring up the field with a nine-under 62 to finish tied fourth and secure one of three Open places on offer.

There was a time when the man nicknamed Beef was more popular than a Sunday roast. Behind the smiles, high-fives and seemingly care-free approach to his golfing life, however, there was a dispiriting side which he documented in a European Tour blog and told of lonely nights sobbing with despair in hotel rooms as he struggled to cope with his own expectations and the general hoopla that surrounded him.

There were more tears yesterday, but they were of joy and relief at the conclusion of a round in which he flirted with the possibility of a 59 after six birdies in seven holes on his back nine.

“Life’s good, man,” said Johnston after finishing on a 19-under aggregate and securing a tee-time for Portrush before embracing his fiancée who is carrying their first child. “The pressure was in relation to winning tournaments. I was being compared to guys in the top 10 in the world. I felt like I had to get myself up there and my mindset slowly changed.

“I came back from America and finished like 20th at Wentworth (in the PGA), 20th at the French Open, 20th at the Open and I walked off disgusted with myself every time. Now I look back at that and think it’s crazy, just madness. I was beating myself up for no reason.”

Italy’s Nino Bertasio plundered the third and final Open place on 19-under as he finished on a score that also included the 2016 Claret Jug winner, Henrik Stenson.

By the time the play-off was getting underway, meanwhile, Rory McIlroy would’ve been enjoying a light supper back in Belfast having finished on 13-under after a topsy-turvy 69.

Over the course of the week, McIlroy racked up a haul of 23 birdies but 10 bogeys was never going to make him competitive in this all-guns-blazing turkey shoot.

Nevertheless, the 30-year-old was heading home for an Open in his own backyard in reasonable fettle. “I think I got what I wanted out of the week for the most part,” he said. “I would have loved to have been in the thick of things going into the final round but I just made too many mistakes over the week to do that.”