How Troon left some of world's top players broken in 'brutal and beautiful' Open

By that stage, of course, Royal Troon had proved too tough on this occasion for the likes of Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy, Bryson DeChambeau, Cameron Smith, Ludvig Aberg, Viktor Hovland and the 2016 winner there, Henrik Stenson.

On that occasion, Stenson won with a 20-under-par total as he pipped Phil Mickelson in their ‘High Noon at Troon’ duel and the sheer brilliance of that effort has just been rubber-stamped.

The winning aggregate this time around was nine under and that was set by a brilliant bogey-free final-round 65 from Xander Schauffele as the American was crowned Champion Golfer of the Year.

Just nine players finished in red figures on Sunday compared to 17 eight years ago as the Ayrshire venue showed the game’s new generation of stars exactly why it had earned its tough reputation from nine previous stagings of the Claret Jug event.

Eighty players tackled it over 72 holes and the combined aggregate in relation to par was 526 over, with the scoring average for all four rounds being 73.851. There were 163 bogeys or worse at the par-4 11th and eight more than that at the par-3 fourth.

Almost from start to finish, Mother Nature had a grip of this event by the neck. A southerly wind as opposed to the prevailing northerly wind caught players out on the first two days.

A wind switch and constant heavy rain then turned Saturday afternoon into a real slog before players faced a strong crosswind and a chill in the air on Sunday. The easiest conditions of the whole week were probably in the last hour or so as Schauffele showed his class to become a multiple major winner this year.

It was the 11th year in a row that we’ve had a first-time winner of The Open, making it the joint-longest span in that respect, but there’s absolutely no harm whatsoever in that.

It was brilliant to see Englishman Dan Brown, the event’s surprise package, stay up there as long as he did before ending up in a tie for tenth and, boy, did Justin Rose give it a great run at the age of 43, which, of course, only served to make those who were there at Royal Birkdale in in 1998 as he burst onto the scene as an amateur feel decidedly ancient.

Nairn’s Calum Scott was the player who produced the amateur dramatics on this occasion and he’ll be absolutely delighted if, using this performance as a springboard, he goes on to achieve even a fraction of what Rose has as a professional.

We had thunderclaps this time rather than boos from the fans on the last day and, though certainly busy around the Postage Stamp, which was hardly surprising in a venue record of 258,174 over the course of the week, it seemed more enjoyable from a spectator point of view from Hoylake 12 months ago.

The Genesis Scottish Open may be looking for a temporary home if The Open is indeed heading back to Muirfield, with 2027 a strong possibility, and a slightly tamed-down Troon would be brilliant if some sort of reciprocal arrangement could be made by The R&A and DP World Tour.