These are tut-tutting, head-shaking, finger-wagging times and the only way you can get through the daily grind of tut-tutting, head-shaking and finger-wagging is to indulge in a variety of earthly vices. This correspondent, for instance, has seasoned colleagues who have so much booze in their system, a routine blood test either comes with a head on it or the doctor asks if they’d like ice and a slice with the sample.

Of course, wolfing down the occasional pint and a bag of smoky bacon crisps tends to get that growing band of health-conscious smuggos up in arms as they frown and scoff at your pitiful slurps and chomps while harping on about the benefits of super-foods like quinoa and extolling the virtues of a variety of soils, twigs and raw bloomin’ catfish nuggets.

Here in the world of golf, we are never done hand-wringing and moralising particularly when it comes to the issue of single-sex clubs. Last week’s decision by the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers to abolish its men-only membership policy was greeted with a giddy mix of huzzahs and harrumphs while attracting the kind of mouth-frothing you’d tend to get when a kennel of Dobermans are unleashed into a links sausage factory. Frankly, the whole issue of men-only and women-only clubs has never caused me to lose any sleep but, for the good of the game as a whole, I’ve always thought it would be preferable to just talk about golfers at clubs instead of males doing this and females doing that.

Whatever your stance on the Muirfield decision – a welcome sign of all-embracing progress or a cynical, commercial u-turn in order to get the Open Championship back – the fall-out continues to provide plenty of fodder for a variety of fist-shaking female commentators who are clearly not happy either way. One mocking article in a national newspaper last week, which meandered into the world of menstruation and was presumably meant to be a let’s-all-guffaw-at-those-dimwit blokes piece, eventually concluded with the line, “this is where they (the men) can play a stupid sport that is also very, very boring.” I’m not sure what female cause the writer was trying to champion with that one but it certainly wasn’t doing anything for the thousands and thousands of women golfers, young and old, who play and enjoy this seemingly stupid and boring sport. In that sense, they too are all stupid and boring for playing a stupid and boring sport. Way to go sister.

Of course, the problem that golf faces in bandwagon-jumping times like these is the old chestnut of crippling negative perceptions which arms folk who have never played the game with a convenient stick with which to beat it. To them, golf is basically the reserve of a handful of crotchety old flight lieutenants and a gang of braying Gin swillers telling a few ribald anecdotes recalling some jovial wild boar shoot in the Carpathians.

At times, this Royal & Ancient pursuit doesn’t do itself any favours but the general ignorance from outside can feed the knee-jerk hysteria, sneering indifference and sweeping, lazy assumptions. One male reader’s letter published in this very paper the other day suggested the irony of a men-only club voting for female members due to the “Open Championship which won’t let women play in it.” But hold those pious horses. It’s 12 years now since The R&A made a seismic change to the entry form of the world’s oldest major and allowed female golfers of a certain standard – namely, the top five from each of the previous year’s women’s majors – an exemption into regional qualifying. Admittedly, it’s a fairly monumental task but the opportunity is there for the intrepid. The fact of the matter, however, is that in these dozen years, not one female player has opted to give it a go. And why would they? We probably all remember that strange sideshow of a teenage Michelle Wie teeing-up alongside the men in a series of tour events. Yes, she came within a shot of making the cut in one of her early appearances but the whole affair swiftly descended into an awkward exercise in corporate exploitation and a ghastly, point-and-gawp media circus which did nothing for Wie’s development or the women’s game in general. Catriona Matthew suggested a few years ago that she didn’t “see the point” of women playing in the men’s Open as the celebrated Scot tempered the salivating excitability of the equality zealots with a dose of calming realism. “I've not heard any talk of anybody wanting to do it and women in the Open has kind of drifted away,” she said.

Now that the men-only clubs are slowly drifting away too, we can perhaps start focussing on some of the positives in this, ahem, stupid and boring sport?