More golf in the headlines, which meant finding a different way to look at it and find a religious theme. In the event, this piece was uncannily predictive, unlike the wind, the strength, direction and unpredictability of which was for four days the main topic of conversation in golf clubhouses around the world.

As the golfers tee off in the Open Championship tomorrow, you can be sure that not just Colin Montgomerie will be looking back with fond recall to last week’s cultured garden of the Loch Lomond course. From those stylish designer curves, they have moved on to something considerably more rugged, though certainly closer to the roots of golf, the fearsome Carnoustie, clinging to the windswept shores of Angus.

Now, they didn’t stuff the first golf balls with feathers for nothing. In their journey from tee to hole they spend very little time in contact with the ground. Like the birds, a golf ball sails on the wind, and in Scotland one thing we have plenty of is wind, so I suppose it should have been expected that we would invent a game that plays with it.

Like the sun and the rain, the wind is mentioned in Qur’an as one of the signs of God, the Giver of Life and the Creator of Death. So the Qur’an speaks of fertilising winds, spreading seeds and pollen, and great winds driving rain-clouds across the land to bring those seeds to life. Winds of delight, with perfume on their breezes. “And to Solomon, We subjected the wind to his power, to flow gently to his order, wherever he willed.”

Such a wind would probably be welcome at the Open, but Qur’an also reminds us of other kinds of wind, freezing winds and winds of pestilence, and “a clamorous wind, picking up men like stumps of uprooted trees”, though  even if the UK could be turning into twister country, such events are not really expected over the next few days.

Nonetheless, some words for the golfers to muse on as they’re gazing into the sky above Carnoustie. “It is God who looses the winds, bearing good tidings before God’s mercy, till, when they are charged with cloud, We drive it to a dead land and therewith send down water, and bring forth thereby all the fruits. Even so We shall bring forth the dead; haply you will remember.”

“In the turning about of the winds” says Qur’an “there are signs for a people who understand”.