To the sun-kissed (sometimes) Ayrshire coast and the bejewelled burgh of Troon where, I am told, a golf tournament is in progress. To Troon, which Willie McIlvanney, a native of nearby Kilmarnock, said is a town where even the seagulls talk posh. To Troon where, even as I write, ScotRail’s entire fleet of trains is disgorging middle-aged men in their tens of thousands with the look on their faces of pilgrims hurrying to the Hajj.

Because golf is a serious business which its devotees suggest is akin to a religious experience. You often hear pundits refer to the “golfing gods” in whose gift it is to send some unfortunate players’ balls into bunkers and brambles and others directly into the hole from a distance of 300 yards. When you see golfers muttering to themselves, as so many do, they are asking forgiveness for their many sins in the hope that one of the gods will deliver them from a water trap.

Golf is just a game, insist those who are clueless. It is, of course, much, much more than that. Anyone who knows anything about anything is aware that it is on golf courses and in their clubhouses that everything that matters is decided. It is not at Holyrood or Westminster where the power lies; it is on the fairways of St Andrews and Muirfield and, yes, Troon. Here men – and it’s still invariably men, with curated beer bellies and purple complexions – sort stuff out. I would be more specific but as a woman I am not privy to their deliberations. Suffice it to say, as a graduate of St Andrews university, who lived in student accommodation overlooking the Old Course, I know a bit of what I speak. What exactly that is is for me to know and you to find out.

Before addressing you this morning, I studied the leader board of this year’s championship and I was surprised to discover that the world’s most famous – and, arguably, most fêted – golfer is not on it. I am not referring to Tiger Woods who, like Joe Biden, looks to be past his best, or Rory McElroy, who does not appear to be happy with his lot.

No, I am talking about Donald J. Trump who, whenever he wants to play a round opens another course. In the aftermath of his recent shooting, it was said that he was to be found the next day at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida bolt-hole, chipping and putting as if there was no tomorrow. Alas, as ever with the great fantasist, this is turning out to be at odds with the truth.

What is incontestable is that Mr Trump has long recognised that, in politics as in business, the best way to succeed is not to obtain a piece of paper from the likes of Harvard or Yale but to seek membership of an elite golf club. Like public schools, such institutions keep the riff-raff at bay and allow the members to plot and scheme to their hearts’ content without fear of anyone listening in.

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Here, like talks to like. John Updike, a great writer and addicted golfer, recognised this fact. “Let us assume,” he wrote in one of many essays about the game that had blighted much of his adult life, “that most men and women with the leisure and wherewithal to play seriously at golf have attained in their lives a somewhat cushioned position.”

By its very nature, therefore, golf is financially and societally selective. In short, poor people need not apply; their sporting ambitions must be met elsewhere, with darts, say, or skittles. These days golf, as DH Telford of Fairlie so eloquently wrote in Friday’s newspaper, is the preserve of “touts, hospitality swingers and sundry money-grubbing charlatans”. In what category Mr Trump sits I am not qualified to answer; perhaps all three. And then some.

On the bedside of every golfer is a copy of his book The Best Golf Advice I Ever Received. For what has been called a classic of its type, perhaps by the author, Mr Trump asked sundry folk, some of whom were golfers, to write it for him. One such was the actor Michael Douglas, who told him that whenever he wants to slow the tempo of his swing, he says his wife’s name and doesn’t even think about bringing the club down until he gets to ‘Jones’. How this applies to ‘Melania’ is unclear.

USA's Tiger Woods on the 18th during day two of The Open at Royal Troon

As the world tries to comprehend what a second Trump presidency will mean for, say, Ukraine, Gaza, Taiwan and Mexico, his place in golfing history is reassuringly secure. As a cheat. Rick Reilly, in Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump, describes the lengths the former president will go to win.

For example, he uses a “turbo-charged golf cart” which allows him to race ahead of opponents and, unseen, move his ball to a more advantageous position. Once, his rivals saw the splash as his ball landed in a pond but when eventually they caught up with him it had miraculously found its way to the middle of the fairway. Unique in golf’s roll-call of sinners, he has somehow managed to win tournaments when he wasn’t in the state where they were played. Famous golfers, says Reilly, agree to play with Mr Trump just so they can have stories to tell about his cheating.

How all this makes him fit to be the Leader of the Free World is beyond my comprehension. How golfers can support him is likewise a mystery, yet they do. But that’s golf for you, a sport that used to prize self-regulation and was, in its early days, open to all-comers. No more, as golfers have queued up to grab hundreds of millions of pounds from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. Have they any shame? Do Liz Truss or Paula Vennells?

There again, golf is a game designed to make its worshippers sad and bitter. They play and they play and at a certain point in life they know that the word handicap is the only one that matters. It is like some malignant growth, wrote PG Wodehouse, which eats into their souls.

Mr Trump has such a disease. He is golf incarnate; deluded, frustrated, angry, all because a little, white dimpled ball refuses to do what he tells it. In Troon they know how he feels.