leaderboard charting the progress of teams that sound like they’re part of a Christmas pub quiz. The Majesticks, The RangeGoats, The Cleeks, The Toilet Seats, I just made up that last one. There really is a team called the Rippers. You’ve got to love the Rippers! Rahm ludicrously compared this contrived and artificial setup to his childhood football team, Athletic Bilbao, eight-time winners of La Liga who proudly represent the Basque Country by famously only selecting players native to that region. That is team with meaning. the late David Warner decides to pursue the doomed lovers Rose and Jack to get his hands on a priceless diamond in spite of the fact that he is likely facing certain death as the dining room floods around him. Cameron removed this sequence from the film because the audience wouldn’t believe anyone would actually do that. But it feels somewhat apt for the corporate melodrama that is men’s professional golf. The ship has struck the iceberg, it’s sinking, it cannot be saved, but the characters are getting their hands on what gold they can on the way down to the bottom of the ocean. DP World Tour star Eddie Pepperrell summed it up best when he recently tweeted, “Pro golf is on a one-way street to nowhere. Lost its mind, and I’ve lost my respect and love for it.” He is not alone. But thankfully - despite the noise - showbiz golf really isn’t the game. We can simply ignore it and get on with what truly matters. The friendship, companionship, challenge and rewards that golf enduringly provides. I look forward to seeing you on the first tee. That’s not to say that we don’t require change in the everyday diet of televised events. But it’s a moot point with everything being so irretrievably fractured and in danger of sliding into further public irrelevance. Whatever happens during the coming years, few will be satisfied, apart from the bank managers and agents of players for whom greed is dressed up in that celebrated virtue of ‘growing the game.’ There is a deleted scene from the 1997 epic blockbuster Titanic in which a villainous henchman called Spicer Lovejoy played by Indiana Golf Journal
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