Any PGA professional able to attend the Trade Show, the TCC and the Congress, will arrive at the end of this appetising new season with enough golf educational information to fill a small encyclopaedia.

While I’m not qualified to speak for other sports on the subject of career opportunities, the reality is that for those young people with the necessary basic aptitude, golf is not only a proper job, but one with glittering prospects.

Due to an initiative funded by the The Royal & Ancient of St Andrews, conducted with the support of the PGAsE, the gospel of golf is being spread globally faster than ever and the initiative that began in the humblest of fashions some 20 years ago has now become the World Golf Development Programme.

Love technology, or hate it… but any authority, even the eminentlysensible R&A, trying to stop it would be like King Canute attempting to hold back the tide. Yet, strangely, while the debate about drivers and the necessity or otherwise of re-designing golf courses, has been played out, the arrival, and the ready-acceptance of the GPS has been comparatively unnoticed.

A couple of gentlemen having a chat in a hotel room, before dinner, is not everyone’s idea of a meeting to change the face of world golf forever... Far more fitting, as an iconic memory, is the unforgettable sight of the Concorde above massed crowds at the Belfry celebrating 1985 victory by Tony Jacklin’s Europe. Contrasting though they may be, these two scenarios are linked, not only to each other but to the intoxicating transatlantic tour de force that The Ryder Cup has now become. And, more enticingly, to The K Club installment that shortly will grip the golfing community by its nerve ends.

My only visit to the Volvo Masters at Valderrama was in 2002 when, as a play-off loomed and light was failing fast, Colin Montgomerie and Bernhard Langer decided to tie, and share the award. Along with the memory of that unusual outcome, there lingers another not-very-original impression: this is that Jaime Ortiz Patiño’s creation is a masterpiece in terms of coursequality and general ambience.

When the Costa del Sol led the rest of Europe into what might be regarded as a frenzy of constructing new golf courses - at least one new one a year on average, beginning some 25 years ago - they really started something, didn’t they?