Shamefully, I had long been prejudiced against golf and golfers, and was amused when someone described the game as “a good walk spoiled”. Unfairly, I associated golf with suburban chaps who say things like “Name your poison, squire!” and refer to their spouses as “my lady wife”. This is clearly uncharitable and judgmental. For all I know, your average golfer may, in the words of PG Wodehouse, be curled up of an evening with a copy of Spinoza. My anti-golf prejudices were shared by those members of my generation who were rebels and revolutionaries. When the civil rights movement started in Northern Ireland in 1969, and unrest followed repressive police measures, Bernadette Devlin, the firebrand young MP, said sardonically: “There’ll be no riotin’ in the golf clubs!” Bernadette’s supporters saw golf as a smug, middle-class institution preserving the status quo. Yet in a sweet turnaround of events, this bourgeois sporting pursuit is proving to be a positive and uplifting unifier in Ireland, north and south, with joyful celebrations at the victory of the Irish champion, Shane Lowry, at Royal Portrush. Holding the Open golf tournament at that lovely resort in Northern Ireland has been an altogether welcome boost for the whole region, and while the political classes clutch their heads over the conundrum of the Brexit Irish backstop, golf emerges as the champion of ecumenism and inclusiveness. Lowry comes from a small town in Co Offaly in the Irish midlands called Clara. Clara’s name was sometimes evoked as the ultimate backwater. But now Clara can stand proud with the triumph of its native son, golf champion. Yet Shane himself also sees the bigger picture. North and south of the border, he said, he found the same spirit of congratulation and generosity: “Golf has always been an all-Ireland game.” There was indeed no rioting in the golf clubs – but who would have predicted that in its own way this decorous sport would turn out to be an agency for positive change?