EVERYDAY life is full of constant irritations isn’t it? The other night, for instance, I popped along to a concert, purchased a sturdy libation, established a solid beachhead with a good view of the stage and stood there feeling quietly pleased with myself while giving that kind of nodding, surveying contentment you tend to deliver when you’ve successfully pieced together a modest build-it-yourself shoe rack with an Allen key.

Of course, this little scene was ruined at the last minute when the tallest man in Glasgow opted to stand in front of me, proceeded to adopt the same kind of head-bobbing satisfaction that I had enjoyed just moments earlier and was clearly oblivious to the muttering hostility his actions were provoking behind him.

And as the show went on, and my animated neck started to crane here, there and everywhere like an increasingly agitated swan trying to trace its cygnets in Rouken Glen boating pond, I began to focus more on the bloke obscuring my view than the bloomin’ concert that I’d paid to watch as my tight-lipped, cursing malevolence overwhelmed any sense of rational thought. Come the encore, I must have looked like Jimmy Krankie shaking a futile fist at the Colossus of Rhodes.

That’s the annoying thing about crowds of people, you see. If they’re not getting in your way, then they’re booing national anthems, booing rugby conversions, booing this and booing that and generally making your teeth grind with silent rage as their boozy, gurgling, slack-jawed exhibitionism drags various sporting occasions into the murky realms of half-wittery.

Thank goodness, then, that we have never experienced the 16th hole of the Stadium Course during the PGA Tour’s Phoenix Open. For years it’s been described as the "biggest party in golf" – a gaudy billing which itself sounds utterly appalling – and the amphitheatre surrounding the par-3 hole is the scene of the kind of braying, bawling, beer-swilling buffoonery that used to be the reserve of the Barbarians after they’d ransacked a Roman settlement.

They say it’s a ‘unique atmosphere’ and ‘golfers enjoy the one-off nature of it’. Frankly, it looks and sounds as tasteful as an episode of the Jeremy Kyle Show. Bubba Watson certainly didn’t enjoy it. Admittedly, the former Masters champion has a habit of rubbing folk up the wrong way and saying that he was only playing because of his sponsors hardly endeared him to a partisan local crowd.

“Bubba, you f***ing loser,” came the welcoming holler as he walked on to the 16th green before being roundly booed by a jeering mob. Mercifully, a bit of class prevailed in the end as the quiet, dignified Japanese youngster, Hideki Matsuyama, triumphed amid the boos, booze and boors with a play-off win over Rickie Fowler to record the second PGA Tour win of a career that continues to show plenty of, well, eastern promise.

Unlike the leading lights of golf’s new generation like Rory McIlroy, Jordan Spieth, Jason Day and Fowler, whose individual character traits, personalities and styles are all very familiar to the wider golfing public, Matsuyama’s relatively shy, understated demeanour has made him something of an international man of mystery, although he did reveal his fiery side a couple of years back when he nearly buried his putter head in one of the greens at Doral. “He doesn’t speak English … but he doesn’t speak much Japanese either,” noted one observer of the world No.12. Matsuyama’s results continue to speak volumes, of course. As well as a brace of PGA Tour wins in a professional career that is barely three years old, Matsuyama finished sixth in the Open and 10th in the US Open during his rookie year of 2013 while last April, he claimed fifth in the Masters at Augusta. In this unpredictable game, it’s impossible to predict whether the 23-year-old will become Japan’s first ever male major champion but he is certainly giving plenty of cause for optimism. It’s almost 60 years now since the Japanese duo of Torakichi Nakamura and Koichi Ono beat the decorated American double act of Jimmy Demaret and Sam Snead in what was, essentially, golf’s World Cup. The likes of Jumbo Ozaki and Tommy Nakajima went on to become familiar faces in the 1970s and 1980s while Shigeki Maruyama and Ryuji Imada both notched PGA Tour wins in the noughties. The stetson-wearing Shingo Katayama, meanwhile, also enjoyed top-five finishes in the Masters and the US PGA Championship during that period too.

On the female front, Hisako Higuchi, a true trailblazer for Asian women’s golf, became Japan’s first, and as yet only, major champion when she won the LPGA Championship back in 1977. Her achievements then were rewarded with a ticker-tape parade down the boulevards of Tokyo. Matsuyama may yet have this to look forward to as the future continues to look bright for Japan’s rising son.