For those unfamiliar, Sandy is a PGA Professional and former coach of Robert Allenby and Jarrod Lyle (among others) but these days is perhaps Australia’s strongest advocate for public golf.

If you make the effort to listen (which, of course, I highly recommend) you’ll hear any number of compelling reasons why Sandy is so strong in his support of publicly funded golf.

But it was towards the end of the interview he said something which feels like it somehow ties all those reasons together and – on many levels – taps into the very purpose of the game for so many of us.

It’s not uncommon to hear ‘anti-golf’ types claim golf course land would benefit many more people if it was simply transformed into a park.

"Golf is not life and death (though we are all guilty of taking it too seriously at times) and the game – and access to it – is a blessing." - Rod Morri.

Sandy’s answer to that proposition is at the heart of what got me thinking today.

“If you’ve got something going wrong in your life and you go for a walk, for the time you’re walking you’re thinking about the crap that’s going on in your life,” he said.

“But if in the same frame of mind you go and play golf, all of a sudden your mind is totally consumed with getting that golf ball around. It’s meditation.

“It keeps your mind occupied away from the worries that you may have.”

It’s a simple statement and will resonate with most who play (though likely not with those who don’t).

But at a deeper level it’s also a reminder what a luxury golf is and to take the time to appreciate how lucky we are to be able to play.

That has been brought home in the strongest possible way this past week as incessant rain has battered the east coast and meant lots of golfers missing out on their regular games and courses in the north face long battles to get back to playable shape.

As the song says, we often don’t know what we’ve got till it’s gone.

Meanwhile, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has given many of us a jolt of perspective about the importance – or lack thereof – of double bogeys and bad swings.

Golf is not life and death (though we are all guilty of taking it too seriously at times) and the game – and access to it – is a blessing.

Sandy’s push for public golf isn’t a headline grabber in the way Phil Mickelson’s PR implosion of the last week has been and it’s not as sexy as making star player announcements for the Australian Open or PGA.

But it’s more important than any of those things because it focusses on what is truly important about the game.

Golf is many things to many people but to nearly every one of us who plays, from Tiger Woods on down, it is an important part of maintaining our mental health.