Imagine what the Sydney trailblazer would make of the unprecedented disunity that’s become such a distasteful blight on the 2022 game.

Given his unique story and record of perseverance through so many tribulations, I’d expect Ferrier to urge the protagonists to pull their heads in and get on with the actual sport.

By chance, this Open week will be the most peaceful we see all year on the battlefields of men’s global golf in 2022.

It’s just incredibly sad that we’ve gathered in peace - as something of a reluctant dysfunctional family - at the sport’s spiritual home to focus on what would otherwise be a celebration of a grand milestone.

Greg Norman and LIV Golf represent a public image that the game is elitist and dripping in money. PHOTO: Getty Images.

Because you can bet a LIV stipend that any ceasefire will be short-lived, especially with LIV Golf chief Greg Norman being told by the R&A he’s not welcome in St. Andrews this week.

Meanwhile, the fight for survival itself still goes on at suburban courses around Australia – and the world – as the gulf between the sport’s haves and have-nots becomes ever greater.

You see, for those of us - probably the majority of readers here - who have tried for years to convince the broader community that golf is a game of and for the average person on the streets are now officially losing the fight.

How do you espouse the necessities of Northcote, Moore Park and the like to those who protest golf’s use of land as elitist when those who they recognise as the “faces” of the game pocket hundreds of millions of dollars to actually play less than they once did.

And don’t think for one second that I’m siding with the PGA Tour in all this nonsense.

How has it taken the Saudi invasion to make those in Ponte Vedra agree that the season is too long by a small matter of approximately five months?

And isn’t it amazing how the importance of some international (read non-American) events has risen, at least in recent rhetoric, and promises to become a future battleground.

"...if there’s one thing this unattractive circus has presented golf, it’s the chance for us, the public, to voice our collective disapproval of the greed train and to offer alternatives that actually appeal."

And I don’t want to hear one jot from players – particularly European stars – who don’t play events such as the Irish and Scottish Opens in the lead-up to the Open Championship because the purses aren’t big enough, the courses aren’t “first choice” or their preparations don’t fit in with their mates’ golf trips in the same bloody countries.

The worst bit, though? The indisputable fact that we are arguing and planning around the absolute upper echelon of male professionals who are doing a sensational job of butchering it for not only golfing agnostics, but also their own peers battling on smaller tours worldwide.

I’m not for one second begrudging the journeymen or emerging pros for taking the dollars on offer to play LIV events – I suspect I’d do likewise in the same circumstance.

But it stands to reason that smaller tours will be diminished financially and in terms of strength of field, ultimately making it harder and harder for those on the fringes to make a living.

And if you’re a potential sponsor with a choice of golf or an equivalent, where do you think your marketing cash is likely to head? Certainly not into a publicly unpopular maelstrom created by fat cats.

Stupidity is nowhere near a new bedfellow for golf administrators.

For example, did you know my man Jim Ferrier was denied a start in the 1941 US Amateur because, despite being a journalist to pay for his golf, he’d been deemed by the USGA to have broken the amateur code by taking royalties from an earlier coaching manual he’d been a contributor to in Australia.

But if there’s one thing this unattractive circus has presented golf, it’s the chance for us, the public, to voice our collective disapproval of the greed train and to offer alternatives that actually appeal.

The men's Australian Open might now thrive with the PGA Tour scrapping its wrap-around schedule. PHOTO: Getty Images.

Could it be that national Opens in Japan, South Africa and Australia – among others of significance – can find a spot in an expanded gap in the American calendar?

Could it be that we see more of the team and match play events that create such a buzz on the rare occasions they’re employed?

Could it be that we see more interaction – if not in person, at least in terms of calendar sharing – with the LPGA Tour (which, by the way, is doing a lot of things very well)?

Could we see the voices of the Australasian, Sunshine, Japanese, Korean and Asian Tours (and others), actually heard at the table of the international federation?

Or will we just continue blindly down the path of giving those who least need the cash just a little more while pandering to their greedy managers?

History is sitting in judgement, boys.

Do what’s right.

Please.

For Jim’s sake.