Right, here’s a quick test. Did you know that in mathematics, the Abel-Jacobi map is a construction of algebraic geometry which relates an algebraic curve to its Jacobian variety? Why, of course you did.
Now, do you know the ins and outs of next week’s European Golf Team Championships at Gleneagles? No? Oh well, it’s back to hum-drum, nonchalant bletherings about Abel-Jacobi theorem then as you wait for the kettle to boil in the office canteen.
If you are not fully aware of the golfing arm of this wider 2018 European Championships, which get going this week in Glasgow, then you’re not alone. A segment on a BBC Radio Scotland sports show on Sunday merely highlighted the general sense of mystery surrounding the golf part.
Paul Bush, the director of events for VisitScotland, and a couple of other folk were asked what the format of the competition was … and nobody could give an answer amid much muffled coughing, uncomfortable stutterings and squirming buck passing.
As an example of crushingly awkward radio, it was broadly equivalent to a commentator accidentally breaking wind as the hearse pulls up during a sombre broadcast of a state funeral.
As mentioned in these back page ponderings a couple of times in recent weeks, this scribe has bumped into a few folk who are involved in the championship, be it a match referee or a media officer with the European Tour or Ladies European Tour, and most of them have adopted the kind of glazed look of bewilderment you’d get if you asked a dog to decipher the Voynich manuscripts when conversation turns to the event.
According to some of the bumph and paraphernalia kicking about – and there are plenty of cheery press releases trotting out vapid soundbites and bullish rhetoric without really explaining what is happening - there will be men’s matchplay, women’s matchplay and an 18-hole mixed foursomes format. Well, I think that’s what’s happening anyway.
We’ll probably wheeze up to Gleneagles and discover it’s a nine-hole Texas scramble played with hickories and a novelty gutta percha. The cynical view, of course, is that it all descends into convoluted tokenism and mutual back-slapping.
Presumably things will come out in the wash but amid all the birling, dooking and pedalling that will be going on in and around Glasgow with gymnastics, swimming and cycling, the golf feels very much out on a limb.
We have just come to the end of a bonanza of world class competition in the game’s cradle with the men’s Scottish Open, the Open, the Ladies Scottish Open and the Senior Open being played in back-to-back weeks.
Having enjoyed the best the global game can offer, will the European Team Championships stir the imagination of a public almost sated with competition during July? I’ve yet to see or hear any evidence that it will. But I’m willing to eat humble pie.
I’ve thundered up and down the main artery past Gleneagles plenty of times in recent weeks but haven’t glimpsed any form of public displays championing the fact that golf is taking place next week. In terms of a marketing and promotions exercise, the whole thing has been as hush-hush as the D-Day Landings.
Without wanting to sound disrespectful, the prospect of watching Norway’s world No 648, Jarand Ekeland Arnoy, is hardly going to work folk into an excited lather.
The simple reality is that the relevance of a tournament is determined by the players who are there. Yes, there is a Catriona Matthew, a Laura Davies, a Richie Ramsay and a Georgia Hall but the field is more of a who’s that? than a who’s who.
Given the chronic lack of events on the Ladies European Tour, a problem which continues to hamper the development of young players, the female golfers stand to benefit far more from next week’s event than the men. As for golf engaging with a wider audience, though? We’ll wait and see.
At the moment, it seems the level of press release-driven bravado from those behind the scenes is only replicated by the volume of people almost unaware of the event's existence.
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