Back in the good old days - and some of you will probably recall good old days that were much older and, er, gooder than the good old days that I’m harping on about – play time at school meant exactly that. These days, the 15 minutes of classroom emancipation makes a maximum security prison look liberating as panic-stricken high-visibility playground supervisors career about wagging their fingers, bawling instructions and generally nipping anything remotely carefree in the bud. Gasp in horror, as a 10-year-old threatens to burst into a spontaneous run of joy. Shriek in terror, as reckless primary 7s risk shearing a finger off while swapping football stickers. Scream with anguish, as a giggling game of tig has the potential to provoke a skint knee epidemic of eye-popping proportions. In these jittery, cotton wool-smothered times, it’s no wonder some bairns grow up to be hooting, whooping champions of extreme sports. “I got detention for playing conkers at school but nowadays I regularly fling myself backwards off a 400 ft cliff with nothing but a chamois leather to soften the landing,” is a phrase this scribe often hears from fresh-faced daredevil dudes as I mull over the weekly column from the edge of a perilous precipice.

Here in the world of golf, the supervisors of that playground that is the European Tour would probably like a few more high visibility players to be shining like those luminous jaickets. By all accounts, the revived British Masters went down a treat. The purse was a sturdy £3 million, almost 60,000 spectators marched through the gates and the presence of a ‘tournament host’ – Ian Poulter performed the role last week with Luke Donald and Justin Rose set to follow in later editions – gave it that bit more profile.

Yesterday, the tour unveiled a significant hike in prize money for next year’s Irish Open, which will see the overall pot increase from around £1.85 million to almost £3 million. With Rory McIlroy continuing as tournament host, and his tentacles of influence helping to secure major backing from Dubai Duty Free for three more years, the impact of player power is obvious. Here is a superstar figure and a man more marketable than a ‘One Direction’ calendar putting something back into the tour that gave him a leg up in the first instance.

“I feel like I owe a lot to the European Tour, they gave me a lot of playing opportunities at the start of my career and I'm pretty grateful for that," said McIlroy, who is following the lead of our own Paul Lawrie and putting his money where his mouth is. McIlroy revealed last week that he had contemplated giving up his European Tour membership to make his transatlantic schedule easier to manage. It was a statement that would have sent shivers shuddering down the spine of the tour’s top brass but the Northern Irishman is remaining true to his school.

In the cut-and-thrust of the upper echelons, golf is a selfish game. The riches on offer at the highest level would embarrass a Sultan and for those ‘independent contractors’ at the top of the tree, who can dip their bread in any global gravy train that rumbles by, brand loyalty isn’t necessarily a common occurrence. Competing with the money-soaked beast that is the PGA Tour in America is a bit like breaking wind against thunder but the European Tour’s recent announcement that they would be forging a closer alliance with their friends at the Asian Tour was something of a flexing of muscles. Of course, getting regular events back in its traditional heartland remains a major objective for the tour’s new chief executive, Keith Pelley. Back in those bountiful days of 2000, the European schedule had seven stop-offs in England. The return of last week’s British Masters, after a seven-year hiatus, brought the number back to two. For many a year, the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth has been the only regular tour event staged south of the border, a fairly dismal statistic but one that simply highlights the general struggles of attracting and maintaining sizeable financial input.

The involvement of those who make the tour what it is – the players – is key moving forward. Not every player has the clout of McIlroy but the circuit’s other big names have made it clear that they are eager to sit down and offer their thoughts on how to shape a brighter future. There can often be a lot of take from players but there has to be some give too. Their presence and commitment attracts sponsors and sponsors are happy when big names commit. Spectators are happy to see the big names and bums on seats makes sponsors even happier. There is some way to go before the tour becomes self-generating but the work of McIlroy and Lawrie, as well as the leading role some well-kent names are playing in the reborn British Masters, demonstrates the potential and profitability of player power.