I don’t know about you but I’ve never been particularly bothered about getting on in years.

Let’s face it, successfully negotiating another 12 months on this bamboozling planet without keeling over is quite an achievement given all the doom-laden hectoring and fatalistic tut-tutting that you face on a daily basis about why you shouldn’t be eating this and certainly not drinking that and under no circumstances be smoking a bit of the other.

We all have to leave our youth behind at some point. Look, there it is, sobbing and waving in your rear view mirror as you accelerate away down the shoogly road towards crochety middle age and beyond.

There are probably plenty of folk who have spent a lot of their 20s worrying about turning 30 only to suddenly hit 40 and wish they’d spent less time fretting about turning 30 in the first instance.

All of which brings us wheezing and creaking nicely into this week’s keek at the world of golf.

WILL RORY FLOURISH IN HIS 30s?

Predictions can be a fool’s errand. So too can column writing. Well, that’s what the sports editor says as he pores over the weekly offerings with the grimace of a man who’s just stubbed his toe while reaching down to pick up an eviction notice.

Great expectations have been such a part of Rory McIlroy’s life, they just about have their own room in his house. But how great do we expect him to be?

Some hard-to-please critics say greater then he has been after all and sundry predicted, well, even greater things when he won two majors in 2014 to take his tally to four. He’s not won another since. What did we say about predictions again?

McIlroy turned 30 at the weekend. He remains one of just three players, along with Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus, to have won a quartet of majors and 15 PGA Tour titles while still in his 20s. By any measure, it’s been a brilliant career.

The Herald:

“I’ve learned a lot in the last 10-11 years and feel I can make the next 10-11 years even better,” he said after his Players’ Championship win this season. That victory came before another hugely hyped but ultimately futile assault on the career grand slam at the Masters.

All being well, McIlroy will have plenty more goes at a milestone which has become something of a millstone. Time is on his side in this game of patience. But patience is a virtue some feverish observers don’t often have.

Countless golfers have flourished in their 30s and 40s. Nick Faldo won his first major – the 1987 Open – the day after he turned 30. He would go on to add another five in the next nine years.

The great Seve, meanwhile, had four before he was 30 and added another at 31. There would be no more after that, though, and his career would never reach the swashbuckling heights again.

McIlroy has left his 20s in an exalted position occupied by the very best. Is his best yet to come or is he past his best? In this unpredictable game, I’ll leave the predictions to the fools.

THE DRUGS DON’T WORK … OR DO THEY?

There are all manner of potions, elixirs, brews and concoctions you can swallow to get you through every day life.

In golf, the latest fad seems to be cannabidiol products, or CBDs, which have a property extracted from marijuana plants and are said to reduce anxiety, inflammation, sleeplessness and chronic pain. A bit like the medicinal powers of the Tuesday column then?

It’s not on the World Anti-Doping Agency’s banned list, it is easily available in all manner of shapes and sizes and, just the other week, former Masters champion Bubba Watson signed a partnership with a CBD company. So all good then?

Well, the PGA Tour muddied the waters somewhat by telling players they should use the products “at their own risk”.

Now, there seems to be growing, narrow-eyed suspicion about the whole CBD malarkey with one renowned columnist last week even suggesting its use was on a par with the doping shenanigans that have enveloped cycling.

Such has been golf’s fumbling and bumbling when it comes to drug-testing down the years, it’s perhaps not surprising that dithering bodies like the PGA Tour come over all paranoid and hysterical whenever an issue like this crops up, even when there is no evidence to suggest anything remotely unethical about the use of CBD.

The PGA Tour actively embraces gambling and alcohol brands so getting all hot under the collar about some herbal remedy is a bit odd. Perhaps they should take a CBD product and calm down? Either that or at least give the players clarity and confidence and not leave them open to suspicion.

LOCAL LAD FLEETWOOD DOES HIS BIT

The Herald:

Tommy Fleetwood will be a busy boy this week. He hosts the British Masters in his home town of Southport while demands on his time – there will be countless media duties and a televised exhibition event to play in Liverpool tonight – will be considerable.

Fleetwood’s intervention essentially saved the British Masters, an event with a rich history but one that was in danger of falling off the tour’s schedule at a time when British golfers are thriving on both sides of the Atlantic.

The one drawback for Fleetwood is that it eats into his preparation for the second major of the season, the US PGA Championship in New York next week. Given all the hosting hoopla, he probably wouldn’t be too distraught if he misses the cut on Friday.