Well, that’s The Open done and dusted for another year. The golf writers have been deloused and demobbed while the media centre has been razed to the ground.
I’m pretty sure some folk would prefer it if a few of us were still in the thing when it came crashing down.
You meet all sorts in this vast hive of industry. Your correspondent, for instance, was sitting near a delightful fellow called Jason Page, an Amsterdam-based American artist who captures the quirks and curiosities of golf in illustrations and textile patchworks.
Presumably, my abundant absurdities gave him plenty of inspiration for an abstract piece.
In an online interview a couple of years ago, Jason talked of a mug that he keeps his pencils in and the words that are printed on said cup.
“It says, ‘my job is top secret, I don’t even know what I’m doing',” he explained.
This scribe had found a kindred spirit. The only difference, of course, is that it’s no secret that I don’t know what the heck I’m doing. It's all laid bare in this column.
There was plenty of material for artists and golf scribblers alike to mull over from a wonderfully staged Open.
Royal Birkdale was a truly tremendous host, even if some of the guests didn’t cover themselves in glory.
The prolonged and petulant pantomime involving Bryson DeChambeau, and the stink that was kicked up by his two-shot penalty on a fraught Friday night, threatened to overwhelm the whole championship.
Thank the golfing gods, then, that he slithered quietly out of the reckoning on Sunday. Imagine the palaver had he finished a stroke behind the eventual champion, Ryan Fox, and that penalty cost him the title?
President Trump, a close ally of DeChambeau, would’ve sent the US military to Southport with a furious rallying cry.
As for oor ain Robert MacIntyre? Well, the Oban man’s campaign finished on a sour note as he was given an official warning for serious misconduct during the final round.
As his frustrations grew at his lack of progress on the links, MacIntyre thumped his driver into the turf on the 16th tee. At that point, an R&A official stepped in and gave the Scot a ticking off.
We’ve been here before with MacIntyre, of course. And, as even he suggested in the aftermath, we’ll no doubt go there again with him.
He’s not going to change overnight, is he? But how do you solve a problem like MacIntyre’s mentality?
You can write in and tell me if you have any ideas. Perhaps he’ll embark on the kind of intrepid journey into mindfulness that the Beatles used to make when they sought the guidance of the Maharishi? Maybe not.
Most of you will know the well-quoted pearl of golfing wisdom from the great Bobby Jones.
“Competitive golf is played mainly on a five-and-a-half-inch course, the space between your ears,” said the grand slam winner of yore about the importance of keeping the heid while others are losing theirs.
Jones also understood, though, that this endlessly fascinating and often infuriating game can tease and torment like nothing else.
“Sometimes emotions cannot be endured with a golf club in your hand,” he reasoned.
Tantrums, hissy fits, meltdowns and flare-ups have been part of golf ever since somebody decided that thwacking a small ball with a variety of sticks was a good idea.
These days, of course, the scrutiny of such outbursts and eruptions is remorseless and clips of MacIntyre doing this, that and the other on a course tend to go viral at a pace only matched by the speed in which the UK hurtles through Prime Ministers.
The fevered court of public opinion, meanwhile, issues damning condemnation and demands he trudges around in sackcloth and ashes.
MacIntyre, the world No 17, has admitted that he is working with somebody on the mental side of the game. No amount of pearl clutching or pious ponderings from us lot will improve that area of his golf. He has to do it himself.
We don’t want his impressive roll of honour to be overshadowed by codes of conduct, do we?
But MacIntyre’s heart on the sleeve approach is part of who he is. Take away the fire, and the fury, and you take away a chunck of the soul of his game.
It can be a bit of a perilous tightrope to walk. And when he wobbles, then brace yourself for the crash, bang and wallop.
Are these outbursts and outpourings becoming a barrier to his ambitions of climbing even higher in a game of extremely fine margins? Who knows.
But his approach, and his attitude, have already combined to make him one of the world’s best. One presumes single-minded MacIntyre will continue to do it his way.
The aforementioned Fox, meanwhile, certainly won The Open his way. And that way is wonderfully brisk.
At a time when golf moves along with about as much surging impetus as a shipping tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, Fox’s sprightly approach to pace of play remains delightfully refreshing.
“For me, it’s not that difficult to pick a club and pick a shot,” he said. “See shot, hit shot, that’s always been my philosophy.
“The less time I have to think about it, the less bad stuff can creep in there.”
There’s a golfing lesson in there for all of us.
