The modern world is hectic. So hectic, in fact, it seems that we have decided to accelerate past spring and hurtle straight into the height of summer. Ne’er cast a cloot till May be oot? Sod that.

Who needs a transitional period of gradually warming temperatures, which would perhaps see you tentatively discarding the semmits or long johns over the course of a few weeks, when you can just suddenly fling off the layers in wild, instant abandon and strip to the bare essentials and beyond with all the panting gusto of Caligula preparing to host one of his more salacious, writhing social gatherings.

Of course, in this meteorological minefield of a country, crushing deflation on the weather front is never far away.

By the time you’ve grumbled the phrase, ‘there’s an area of low pressure moving in from the west’, the cloots that you’d hastily cast oot will probably be getting looked oot again and we won’t see a nice spell until September.

Talking of a sense of anti-climax, it’s been a bit like this in the world of golf over the past week. Seven days ago, just about the entire population of the planet was still in a state of overwhelmed rapture in the wake of Tiger Woods’ Masters win.

Glasgow Times:

READ MORE: Pia Babnik romps to seven shot win in Helen Holm Scottish Women's Open

Golf itself seemed so euphorically giddy, it was like it had just gulped down half a bottle of Prosecco on an empty stomach. It was perhaps inevitable then that there would be something of a hangover …

JOHNSON’S CHALLENGE GOES DOWN THE PAN

One of the best things about this great game is that anybody can become a somebody on any given week on the tour.

C T Pan was 111th on the world rankings going into the RBC Heritage at the weekend. Come Sunday night, the Taiwanese had captured his first PGA Tour title and had slipped into one of golf’s most hideous jackets.

Dustin Johnson’s final round collapse, meanwhile, once again illustrated the wonderfully humbling quirks and absurdities of this volatile pursuit. Leading by a stroke overnight, the world No.1 sagged to a quite ruinous inward half that was strewn with the kind of filthy debris you’d get after the Lord Mayor’s Show.

Rather like his calamitous 82 when leading after 54-holes of the 2010 US Open or his chaotic 77 when holding a six shot lead on the final day of the WGC HSBC Champions event in 2017, Johnson’s error-ridden 77 on Sunday saw his title tilt rent asunder in head-scratching wretchedness.

Glasgow Times:

READ MORE: David Law not worried by post-victory toil on European Tour

As the decorated amateur of yore, Horace Hutchinson, once observed: “If profanity had an influence on the flight of the ball, the game of golf would be played far better than it is.” DJ clearly needs to work on his cursing. As for CT? Well, given that he required just 47 putts over the last two rounds, perhaps he was coaxing the ball with regular, encouraging bursts of ‘get in the ****ing’ hole’?

GIRL POWER AS BABNIK ADDS TO TEENAGE KICKS

We are all potential fodder for the limpet tentacles of the ageing process as it slowly coils itself around our ankles before entangling us in its withering embrace.

That’s an elaborate way of saying I’m 43 next week. And golf in the modern era often makes us feel much older than that.

The Scottish Girls’ Open was won the other week by 15-year-old Hannah Darling. The Helen Holm Scottish Women’s Open over the robust Royal Troon links on Sunday was carted off by another 15-year-old in Pia Babnik of Slovenia.

Women’s golf, both in the junior ranks and on the pro scene, is colourful, charismatic and vibrantly youthful. It’s also fiercely competitive.

Babnik was a fearless wire-to-wire winner at the weekend and she underlined the daunting strength in depth of global golf at all levels. In this game, you have to find your feet quickly.

READ MORE: Hannah Darling has big ambitions as domestic dominance continues

RISING TO THE CHALLENGE ON PROVEN BREEDING GROUND

The European Challenge Tour, the second-tier circuit which remains as cut-throat as an argument in Sweeney Todd’s salon, swings back into action this week in Turkey. For Fife’s Connor Syme, it’s a chance to earn his stripes… again.

Syme fast-tracked himself to the main European Tour as a rookie by coming through the qualifying school in 2017 and playing full-time at the top table in 2018 before losing his full playing rights.

Having tasted the high life, the stripped-back, no frills environment of the Challenge Tour can be a real shock to the system. Many have dropped down a division and struggled to cope with its unforgiving rigours.

Syme, who was a runner-up on the European Tour in 2018, has the talent but the circuit is awash with a wide array of such talent. And, as we know, rising from the Challenge Tour requires more than raw talent alone.

AND ANOTHER THING ...

TYPE ‘golf’ into a Google news search on the interthingymejig and one of the stories that will crop up is the appointment of a female captain at a club in Cardiff. For the first time in 117 years, Radyr will have a woman as its captain. Amazingly, the earth has not toppled off its axis.

These type of appointments are becoming fairly common across the UK and Ireland but, such is the game’s history here, they are still treated with point-and-gawp fanfare which, in some ways, does little for the negative perceptions of the game. A woman becoming a captain at a golf club shouldn’t really generate headlines. It should just be a normal occurence.