Who knows how different world history might have been had Mahatma Gandhi abandoned peaceful protest in favour of ten-pin bowling or if Adolf Hitler had forsaken invading comparatively defenceless countries and had focused all his energies on mastering the banjo? Golf, too, might have been a very different game had those early pioneers not chosen a windswept stretch of inhospitable looking dunes behind the beach upon which to footle about but had instead attempted to bash balls around a frozen lake or up and down a multi-storey car park. Those who are even now mocking this speculative musing might care ...