The modern world is absolutely bonkers. A few years ago, the idea of someone posing like a narcissistic goon and taking a selfie with a mobile phone before gazing at their own pouting, posturing face and sharing it with all and sundry so that everybody else could gaze at it once they’d stopped gazing at their own face on a flippin’ selfie would have been utterly preposterous. Pre-selfie generation, this correspondent, a man about as cutting edge as a medieval tunic, thought the human race had plumbed new technological lows when I discovered a pub that had small television screens bolted into the urinals with each showing half-time analysis from Barnsley versus Huddersfield. Now, read that sentence back to yourself again and ask if we live in a sane, civilized society? Well, that’s progress for you.

Amid all this everyday lunacy, we can, at least, find some sense and reason in the game of golf … although the reasoning behind some of our own shots demonstrates that we regularly take complete leave of our senses.

For Jordan Spieth, the 2015 campaign has been one of astonishing accomplishment. You could even forgive him if he wanted to take a selfie with the $22 million he’s plundered this season.

Barley six months on from a monumental win in the Masters at Augusta, Spieth bookended his shimmering year by winning the Tour Championship along the interstate in Atlanta. Georgia has certainly been a happy hunting ground for this predatory 22-year-old who became the youngest player since Horton Smith in 1929 to win five times on the PGA Tour.

Given the significant surge that Jason Day had produced since breaking his major duck in August’s PGA Championship, those fickle observers in the golfing media had tried, rather forlornly, to stoke up some kind of debate about the Player of the Year award.

After that PGA victory, Day went on to win two of the first three FedEx Cup events and rose, briefly, to No 1 on the world rankings while sparking the kind of feverish cooing you’d tend to get in a tightly packed doocot. As Day gathered up the prizes and the plaudits, Spieth showed that he was human by missing two cuts on the spin during the FedEx series. Despite winning the first two majors of the season, missing out on the play-off for the Open by a shot and finishing second behind Day in the PGA, it was almost a case, in some quarters, of ‘thanks for the memories Jordan, but Jason is the media darling now and he’s even got a little bairn called Dash who toddles on to the green every time daddy wins.'

With five wins, including a maiden major, Day had a spectacular year. Spieth, the supremely talented young man who flirted with the possibility of the calendar grand slam, had a historic year. For those who were sitting on the fence in the fairly flimsy Player of the Year argument, Spieth’s thumping Tour Championship triumph would have knocked them off it. This was the win that stuck an exclamation mark on a stunning season.

The burden of expectation Spieth humped around with him from the moment he slipped into the Masters Green Jacket was colossal but he dealt with all the hoopla superbly. He made everybody think the unthinkable regarding that grand slam. The fact he was still in with a chance of completing the third leg of the ‘impregnable quadrilateral’ right up until the very last hole of the Open Championship spoke volumes for his talents, his mental resolve and his self-assuredness.

Spieth is the can do man but critics will always look at things he can’t do. In this era of heavy artillery, the big, booming drive is certainly not his greatest weapon and he finished the year in 78th place out of 184 players in driving distances. This is a multi-faceted pursuit, of course, and his putting is the envy of every player on tour. At No 1 in one-putts per-round and No 2 on those game changers from 15-25 feet, Spieth has been devastating on the greens and has that knack of trundling them in at the crucial moments. But let’s not get bogged down in the stats. Instead, let’s savour his successes.

In 2015, Spieth set a quite remarkable standard as he seized centre stage. His own captivating conquests will be a tough act to follow next year.

AND ANOTHER THING

By all accounts, it had involved more conversations, bickering, finger-jabbing and compromise than The Herald sports desk’s daily conference but the merger of the Scottish Golf Union and the Scottish Ladies’ Golfing Association finally happened. This historic Thursday, Scottish Golf Limited, the new unified governing body for amateur golf in this country, will officially come into force. Nothing will change overnight, of course, but moving forward as one must be better for the long term health of the game.