According to the boffins, there are 14,000 clumps of space junk more than four inches in size birling about in orbit. Presumably, that’s because the solar system’s cooncil have opted to cut the galactic wheelie bin collection to once every three weeks.

Anyway, this clutter of discarded, rusting thingamabobs reminded me of the contents of one of the drawers in my sitting room office – and I use the term ‘office’ loosely – which is stuffed with antiquated chargers, obsolete cables, defunct adapters and an impenetrable tangle of redundant flexes.

I’m sure you’ve all prised open such a storage compartment at some point and been left utterly flabbergasted by the startling discovery of, say, an old mobile phone which used to be the bee’s knees not so long ago but now appears so implausibly lumpen and ridiculous, you may as well have held an entire butternut squash to your ear.

What this meandering waffle has to do with golf is anybody’s guess but it simply highlights the fact that time doesn’t just march on, it often tramples us into the ground. Tournaments that were being eagerly anticipated at the start of the season seem to have flown by in the blink of an eye.

I don’t know about you but I find that days and weeks disappear at such a breathless rate, they’ve come and gone by the time I’m halfway through typing the word breathless. Before you know it, both the Solheim Cup and Ryder Cup will be a distant memory, the 2024 campaign will be underway and some other bit of technology in that ruddy drawer of mine will have been condemned to the museum of relics and useless paraphernalia.

But what a treat we have in store over the next fortnight. September started with a wonderful Walker Cup at sun-soaked St Andrews. Now, we have the two biggest team events in the professional game hurtling towards us with the Solheim Cup taking place this weekend in Spain before all roads lead to Rome for the Ryder Cup a week later.

Amid golf’s staple diet of week-in, week-out 72-hole strokeplay offerings, the opportunity to gorge ourselves on the mouth-watering fare of team competition is like getting a seat at the Medici Wedding banquet.

Given the panting, gasping, all-consuming nature of the Ryder Cup these days – the relentless build-up can be overwhelming - some of you may have forgotten that the Solheim Cup is actually on this week.

The back-to-back staging of these two showpiece occasions on European soil has certainly thrust team golf into centre stage but there’s no denying the one that’s hogging the spotlight. “The Ryder Cup just can’t come quickly enough …what’s that? Oh yes, sorry. There’s a Solheim Cup first.” You get the idea.

Holding the Solheim Cup and Ryder Cup in consecutive weeks is a one-off. It’s been billed as a ‘festival of golf’ but, ideally, less is more. The Solheim Cup will be played again next year – and will remain in even years - to avoid clashing with the Ryder Cup, after the Covid pandemic of 2020, and all the subsequent postponements and cancellations, knocked golf’s schedules doolally. Ultimately, it was the Solheim Cup that had to change date as the Ryder Cup bigwigs stuck to odd years. Typical men eh?

It’ll all sort itself out and getting back to a Solheim Cup in one year and a Ryder Cup in another will be far more beneficial for both events, but more so for the women.

This week’s affair on the Costa del Sol, meanwhile, should be a fascinating tussle. The Europeans, under the captaincy of the formidable Suzann Pettersen for the next two stagings, have won four of the last six meetings and are going for an unprecedented third win in a row. They have plenty of momentum then. They also have plenty of world ranking clout too. Back in 2011, when Europe mounted a quite thrilling late rally to win at Killeen Castle, Pettersen was one of just two European players in the top-20 of the global order.

As a skipper here in 2023, she can call on five players – Celine Boutier (5), Charley Hull (8), Linn Grant (15), Georgia Hall (16) and Leona Maguire (17) – from the upper echelons of the world rankings. Of course, the rankings often don’t matter a jot in the wildly fluctuating, unpredictable cut-and-thrust of head-to-head combat. America, as usual, are collectively stronger on paper but home advantage, experience and that winning habit bolster the European armoury.

The victory, meanwhile, in Toledo in 2021, only the second by Europe on US soil, was played with lingering Covid restrictions still in place. This week, we’ll be back to a full-blown, all-singing, all-dancing affair which will only heighten the spectacle and sense of occasion.

Raw emotion – and my goodness, the feisty Solheim Cup has had plenty of that down the years – tends to be actively encouraged on both sides of the ropes. In the highly charged, tribal arena of the team format, players, perhaps reserved for much of the touring year in their individual cocoon, suddenly find themselves bursting out of the strait jacket. Golf, as a whole, does too amid a frenzy of hoots, hollers, bellows and bawls.

The patriotic pandemonium will reach fever pitch over the next two weeks. Strap yourself in, folks, and enjoy the ride.