DESPITE the whiz-bang championing of those switched on, plugged in techno-zealots, I’ve never been particularly keen on internet banking, no matter how much those fresh-faced tellers in the local branch gleefully gush on about its convenience and its flexibility and its ability to make their jobs easier by preventing old -ashioned goons like me shuffling up to the counter to deposit a poke of wizened fivers and a purse full of Saxon sceats.

“Mr Rodger, online banking really is the way forward,” they coo, but then someone once told me the same thing about online dating until I tried it and attracted such a spectacularly low rate of interest, the Chancellor just about had to call an emergency budget.

In the golfing world, meanwhile, it seems interest in Tiger Woods is refusing to wane. Or, at least, Tiger himself is refusing to let us lose interest even though there are plenty of other young golfers doing interesting things to keep us interested.

Over the last few weeks there have been video clips of Tiger hitting gentle wedges. On Sunday, he posted footage of himself clattering a driver in his trademark Sunday red shirt.

It’s like some odd game of Cluedo but instead of Colonel Mustard in the billiard room with the candlestick, it’s Tiger Woods on the tee with a golf club. The former world No.1 continues to tease with little hints, indicators and pointers while leaving all and sundry once again asking the question, “is he really going to have another stab at a comeback?”

At the start of the year, Woods pencilled in a hefty schedule of events to his competitive diary and purposefully declared that: “I’m not dead, I’m ready to go,” which, admittedly, sounded like something Lazarus would have said before teeing-up in the Bethany 36-hole Perpetual Challenge Rosebowl.

We all know what happened. Woods, in just the second tournament of what he had hoped to be five events in a row, hirpled out of February’s Dubai Desert Classic after just one round of a fairly grim cameo appearance and hasn’t played since.

In that time, he has had the fourth bout of surgery on his crumbling back while he’s also been arrested for driving under the influence and has been forced to seek help for a dependency on prescription drugs. It’s been a sorry, if captivatingly macabre, sequence of events.

The 14-time major winner made a public appearance as a USA vice-captain during the recent Presidents Cup where, once again, he worked drooling observers into yet another giddy fankle when, in response to a question asking if he could envisage the day when the clubs would be away for good, he replied, “definitely”.

And so it goes on, the long, drawn out saga of will he, won’t he that continues to rumble along in the background as the global game marches on with a host of fresh faces at its vibrant vanguard.

We’ve not seen the best of Tiger Woods for a long time but we’ve certainly glimpsed the worst of him. Just when we think we’ve witnessed the last of him, up he pops again with something resembling a trailer for a forthcoming box office hit.

This injury-ravaged chapter of his career over the last few months has proved that Woods can’t live with golf, but he can’t live without it either

At what point does he call it a day? And can he actually bring himself to call it a day? When you’ve been the best and it’s all you’ve ever known, one presumes it must be hard to let it go.

Intrigued, fascinated golf fans, and the media too, can’t let it go either, focusing in to each video and status update on internet platforms with the kind of ghoulish curiosity you’d get if you were sitting across from the elephant man and the bearded lady in a restaurant. The rise of a sporting superstar is almost as enthralling as the descent. It’s a cruel, fickle old world.

Obituaries have been penned and many a eulogy has already been spouted in recent years.

But Woods keeps luring those same folk back in and stirring up thoughts of what ifs, maybes and wait and sees. The Tiger tale goes on …