Well, that’s it folks. By the time you read this, The Open circus will have rumbled out of Troon and the media centre will be getting razed to the ground and incinerated in an elaborate cleansing ritual. “Hopefully you’ll still be in it when they do that,” muttered the sports editor. It’s been a long week for a’body.

The Claret Jug, meanwhile, is off for another 12 months of merriment in the clutches of the new champion. This delightfully ornate drinking vessel stands at around 20 inches tall and attracts oohs and aahs wherever it goes.

As one commentator of yore famously said: “And there it is. The Claret Jug. Six pounds of solid silver that’s worth its weight in gold.”

*Amid the hoopla of Open Sunday, one of the calmest men in the vicinity is the Claret Jug engraver, Garry Harvey. The Scotsman’s steady hand has been carefully etching the champion’s name onto the trophy for the past 20 years. “The shorter the better,” he told the diarist when asked about the name of his preferred winner.

The idea of, say, Christiaan Bezuidenhout standing over a five-footer for the title would probably have Harvey chomping down on his own engraving chisel in an agonised fankle.

Garry, of course, is continuing the sterling work of his late father, Alex, who performed the duty with great diligence for yonks. You could say the Claret Jug had a Sensational Alex Harvey Plinth Band. Dear me.

*The diarist caught up with a very trim Phil Mickelson the other day and was reminded of his six-day fast during which he only had water and a “special coffee blend for wellness.”

We’re off to Portrush for next year’s Open where the golf writers will no doubt indulge in their “special Irish coffee blend for illness”. Slainte.