At first glance not a lot but combined, they conspired to produce the ramblings that follow.

(Sure, it’s a tenuous link but even a strong chain has to have a weakest link.)

Few can match Jones for wisdom about the game and it is one of his quotes which is the inspiration for today’s thoughts.

“One reason golf is such an exasperating game,” Jones wrote, “is that a thing we learned is so easily forgotten, and we find ourselves struggling year after year with faults we had discovered and corrected time and again.”

Every golfer will be nodding in agreement as they read the above, but it is a sentiment not restricted to just the playing of the game.

Each year I also find myself writing a reminder (to myself as much as anybody who happens to be reading) about the joys of watching the game played properly. In person.

It’s easy to forget what professional golf looks – but more importantly sounds and feels like – when we spend so much of our time watching it on TV instead of at the course.

RIGHT: Witnessing a player like David Micheluzzi break through at the WA PGA is something best experienced in person. PHOTO: Australian Golf.

And that’s where the WA PGA comes in.

David Micheluzzi’s heroics at Kalgoorlie at the weekend mark the official start to the Australian Summer of Golf.

The WA PGA was the first of 14 tournaments on Australian soil (plus two in New Zealand) between now and the first week of April next year.

Fans in WA, Queensland, NSW and Victoria will have the opportunity to see – in person – some of our best and most established golfers as well as a crop of rising talent.

And if you’re a fan of the game at all, it is advisable to do so.

Much of the action will be available on TV thanks to a deal announced last week but if there is a tournament being played in your neighbourhood, make the effort to get there.

Whether one of the innovative TPS events (which might be the best spectating experience in the game) or the big-time tournaments like the Australian PGA or Australian Opens, it will be time well spent.

The first and most noticeable difference between what most of us experience every week and what you will see at a tournament is the sound the ball makes coming off the club.

"It’s easy to forget what professional golf looks – but more importantly sounds and feels like – when we spend so much of our time watching it on TV instead of at the course." - Rod Morri.

Even among professionals there are levels of talent and to hear Adam Scott strike an iron is one of life’s great joys.

But as with most things golf it isn’t just one facet of the top-level game that stands out, it is the sum of the parts which make the whole.

Case in point: on television all three-foot putts look the same. But standing greenside as a player faces a downhill, hard breaking left to right three footer to save an important par? That gives context TV can never hope to.

We’ve all seen a mid-iron approach that stops close to the flag on TV and most of the time they appear to be just another golf shot.

But standing behind the player and experiencing a shot like that in full is an almost magical experience.

To feel the wind, see the distance covered and the hazards in full view combined with the contact, the turn on the ball and its flight over the journey … it’s a thing of wonder.

You’ll both learn and be entertained if you make the effort to go and watch some live golf and you’ll also be supporting an important segment of the Australian golf industry.

And after two years of pandemic and all that has entailed, it should be the sort of welcome relief every golfer takes advantage of.