Now in its eleventh edition, the championship once again managed that rarest of feats in golf — making the whole thing look more like a cross between a track meet and a minor nervous breakdown. Victory here isn’t simply about who takes the fewest strokes, but also who can whittle the entire 18 holes into the smallest possible number of minutes. The ultimate prize — completing the course in under 25 minutes — remains so outlandishly ambitious that one suspects it may one day require either jet propulsion or a very strong prevailing wind.

This year’s gathering drew its largest and liveliest crowd to date: seventy athletes from as far afield as New Zealand and Australia, not to mention a robust turnout from France, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, and the ever-keen home team from the UK. It is, by some margin, Britain’s fastest golf tournament and almost certainly its most peculiar.