Can you remember the panic-stricken countdown to the year 2000 when boggle-eyed boffins whipped the world into an appalling lather with apocalyptic predictions about the devastating impact on technology of the Millennium Bug?
Planes would fall out of the sky, kettles would rise up and hold pensioners hostage in their own homes, tumble dryers would storm the Houses of Parliament and the various circuit boards, valves and elaborate tangle of wires that had kept sprightly entertainer Lionel Blair fully operational since the Industrial Revolution would explode amid a mortifying malfunction.
Here in 2018, the Millennium Bug has been replaced by the shuddering anxiety and doom-laden sooth saying over a no-deal Brexit. Listen, what’s that crashing clatter in the background? Why, it’s the sound of thousands of pounds plummeting off the value of your house.
In the world of golf, meanwhile, some of Scotland’s male touring professionals might get a call from Theresa May asking for advice about negotiating a withdrawal from Europe. Let’s face it, the 2018 campaign on the home front has been about as uplifting as a blether with Mark Carney at the last orders bell.
Yes, Russell Knox did win in Ireland and was runner-up in France during a barnstorming summer salvo but the US-based Scot is a PGA Tour player not one of our European Tour mainstays. Take him out of the equation – he is eighth on the Race to Dubai - and there’s been very little to rouse the spirits.
There are just four regular events left on the schedule. By the time they are done and dusted, some of the Scots will have gnawed their finger nails down to the cuticles. Stephen Gallacher should be safe enough at 87th on the rankings while the hardy perennial and great survivor that is David Drysdale is at least clambering in the right direction and his timely share of sixth in the KLM Open dragged him up to 101st.
Scott Jamieson is 109th, just one place above the safety zone of the top 110, but Connor Syme, who illuminated his rookie campaign with a second in the Shot Clock Masters, has work to do at 117th while Richie Ramsay and Marc Warren, who have six tour wins between them, are languishing at 125th and 149th respectively. Bradley Neil, another young rookie, needs to conjure something quite dazzling to haul himself up for the depths of 190th.
In this game, of course, one good week can change everything. And there is still the annual get out of jail card of the Dunhill Links Championship to come, that big money bonanza at St Andrews, Carnoustie and Kingsbarns which has salvaged the season of many a Scot down the years.
The only thing predictable in this pursuit is the unpredictability. If, for instance, you have a squint at Jamieson’s statistics for the season, and compare them to his previous seven years at the top table, you’d think he’d be in reasonable shape on the rankings.
His stroke average is lower than it’s ever been, he’s driving it longer than he ever has, the number of greens in regulation he is hitting is as high as ever and his average putts-per-round figures are lower than any other campaign.
Fine margins, though, are par for the course at this level and Jamieson still finds himself peering over his shoulder like a man who’s just heard a bin lid tumble behind him as he walks down a dimly lit alley.
Depending on form and fortune over the next month or so, we could lose half-a-dozen representatives from the main tour in a savage cull. Equally, those six in jeopardy could all find something special which transforms the year in a stroke. As somebody once observed, “golf can best be defined as an endless series of tragedies obscured by the occasional miracle.”
With Liam Johnston effectively securing promotion from the Challenge Tour after his win in Kazakhstan on Sunday, David Law on course for a step-up too and Grant Forrest still in the card-winning places, we could get a new wave of 20-somethings on the European Tour in 2019.
Ideally, they would bolster those already there, not replace them. It’s better to have strength in numbers, after all.
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