To some it seemed almost sacrilegious, but the most famous links on Planet Golf had been pulverised.
South of the Yangtze River, where Sun Quan's Kingdom of Wu once existed, there are places with more famous links to the ancient king.
But the two famous links courses do share the honor of having employed Old Tom Morris as greenskeeper and course designer, and it was Morris and the members at Prestwick who had the idea of organizing a competition for golf professionals on Oct. 17, 1860.
Sitting in a house just a mid-iron from Troon's famous links, he is nudged back to 1997 again, when a share of 10th place provided his finest major finish at the time and kickstarted his prominence at the highest level.
The council bats single-mindedly for Padiham, a cluster of dark stone Pennine houses in a steep valley with the National Trust's Gawthorpe Hall a famous link with the Bronte family, whose wealthy Liberal friends the Kay-Shuttleworths ran their cotton empire from the town.
Among those playing at the famous links course at the foot of the Mourne Mountains are Kaymer, Ernie Els, Sergio Garcia, Rickie Fowler, Luke Donald and Lee Westwood.
Royal Aberdeen is hosting the Scottish Open for the first time, and a star-studded field will be testing themselves against the famous links.
And on mine, every time that serene expanse of rolling hills floats across my screen, bringing back memories of our one pilgrimage to Scotland some years ago, where we played the famous links, at times into the evening, finding ourselves crouched down, huddling under the protection of a shared umbrella, waiting for the squall to pass, long past dusk, nobody left on the course but us.
But Murat Sofrakis, whose Klagshamn vineyard lies within sight of the famous bridge linking Sweden to Denmark, is undeterred.
