Instead there is a growing possibility that, beyond 2020, only the traditional four majors for the men and five for women will provide the sport’s staple. The failure to seize this moment could cost its Olympic place beyond the Tokyo Games.
Certainly, this week’s offerings, among the tree-lined courses of Baltusrol and Woburn, should be well worth watching for aficionados with insatiable golfing appetites.
Day, Spieth and McIlroy will be striving to make sure 2016 is not a major-less year (it would be the second in a row for McIlroy). Mickelson, meanwhile, will be keen to make up for his defeat by Stenson by repeating his 2005 US PGA triumph at the same course.
The burgeoning rivalry between 19-year-old world number one Lydia Ko and Canada’s Brooke Henderson, who won the women’s PGA Championship aged 18, sets the agenda in Bedfordshire.
There’s also a decent prospect of home success after England’s encouraging third place at last week’s International Crown tournament, where Charley Hull, Jodie Ewart Shadoff, Holly Clyburn and Melissa Reid were beaten only by the US and Korea.
The team event is an innovative addition to the women’s calendar and, thankfully, there is some forward thinking in golf at the moment.
As the European Tour’s chief executive Keith Pelley recently told BBC Radio 5 live: “If you are not prepared to be innovative, not prepared to actually take chances, then I do believe the sports that aren’t will fall behind.”
It’s a shame such an attitude did not prevail when the crowded 2016 summer schedule was drawn up.
After all, golf should have much to smile about. The problem is you become reluctant to do so when your teeth are rotten.
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