Imagine if professional golf was entertaining every week!

I’m really looking forward to the last round of the Arnold Palmer Invitational. This event has captured golf Twitter’s imagination unlike any regular PGA event this season. A stellar leaderboard, with the wonderful Lee Westwood at the top, helps but the biggest story so far this week appears to have been Bryson deChambeau’s tee shot.

In case you missed it, it was on a short par 5 where Bryson took quite a spicy line over water so he was left with only a wedge in. He ended up taking three more a shots for a birdie.

First things first - it was entertaining to watch. I wouldn’t argue about that for a minute. OK, Rory McIlroy executed a similar shot with far more elegance and without the song and dance, but it was definitely fun to watch.

There was a deluge of tweets telling us that this one moment was evidence there was no problem with professional golf. That this one shot made the entire USGA and R&A report into the distance debate moribund. ‘THIS was entertainment, so just leave our game alone please’ was the gist of much of it.

Of course, it was entertaining - but it showed up more than ever the paucity of entertainment in the modern game. Moments of real jeopardy requiring skillful execution are few and far between these days.

Can you recall a single shot from DeChambeau’s victory just 6 months ago at Winged Foot? Probably not. He hit the ball for miles off the tee, usually into the rough. He then hit a wedge into the green, or near it, and took 1 or 2 more shots to get down.

Some say that moments like yesterday show there is a thrill in watching players hit a driver. Such a thrill is fleeting and rare. Bryson’s shot was only exciting because there was a lake in the way. Is it time to build lakes at St Andrews?

The advances in technology have robbed us of so many thrilling moments in the game. The driver-wedge game that has engulfed us in recent years may be impressive on one level, but it’s rarely thrilling.

Imagine if golf became genuinely exciting again. A world where professionals had to use their skill and guile. Where they have to make difficult decisions in the heat of the tournament - to bend a long iron around a tree and skip up to a back pin, or choose to lay up?

The ironic thing is that a tweak in technology could ignite excitement in the game, like we saw fleetingly last night. More people would be engaged, more would be enchanted, meaning that golf equipment manufacturers would actually sell more drivers and more balls as golf became entertaining every week, not just occasionally.

To those journalists and equipment manufacturers who tweeted last night to tell us how exciting the game was, why don’t you embrace the efforts of the USGA and R&A? If we can get away from the driver-wedge drudgery it will mean we have more moments of joy. More moments when we can marvel at the skill of the top pros. Surely that will make golf a more exciting place for us all?