Unless you possess that same instinctive sense of nonchalant, romantic flair that has hoisted the likes of Casanova, Don Juan, Romeo and, er, Colin Montgomerie up into the shimmering pantheon of revered amorous adventurers, St Valentine’s Day can be an anguish-laden palaver for the bumbling male masses. My idea of a sweeping, lovey-dovey gesture, for instance, is putting the kettle on. It’s the, ahem, small things that keep the flames of passion burning, after all. Then again, my fires tend to waft out smoke signals of distress.

Here in the world of golf, meanwhile, you can speak to certain folk and they’ll have you believe that everybody on the planet has simply fallen out of love with the game. The drooling naysayers regurgitate the old chestnuts that it’s too slow, too expensive and too exclusionary while feverishly championing and cooing over an array of other, flavour-of-the-month sports with the same kind of goading piety that used to be the reserve of “The 45”.

In these fast-moving times of instant impact, interaction and innovation, consumers increasingly demand fast-paced, easily digestible sporting fare. Of course, it’s not golf’s fault that society has become so frantic in this seemingly non-stop age where speed and convenience are viewed as much a part of life’s essentials as clean water, oxygen and stories of crisis at Rangers. The battle for relevance in a wider, jam-packed market place continues, though. Despite a raft of highly appealing and engaging young players at the vanguard of the men’s and women’s game, golf often lacks the superstar attraction which is ritually lavished upon other sports. That, in itself, is a huge disservice to a gathering of supremely talented, erudite and colourful performers. When certain media outlets do pick up on golf, the focus is often on decidedly downbeat tidings. It can be an easy target for negativity.

Speaking to one of the main movers and shakers involved with Sky’s coverage of golf a wee while ago, it was intriguing to learn that that the average time they get undivided attention from viewers during a live session is a mere 40 minutes. It’s a fairly small window of opportunity.

This week in Australia, the European Tour’s bold new innovation, the World Super 6 Perth, gets its first public airing. A run-of-the-mill 54-hole strokeplay event will then give way to a series of six-hole matchplay shoot-outs on the final day as Keith Pelley, the circuit’s chief executive, continues his admirable quest to inject the schedule with renewed vigour. It seems the joy of six is titillating all and sundry down at the Tour’s Wentworth HQ because just the other day, they also announced that the GolfSixes, a six-hole, greensomes matchplay event featuring 16 two-man teams, will take place at the Centurion club in Hertfordshire this May.

Golf’s old habits and the “it’s aye been” outlook are so deeply entrenched, you’d struggle to shift them with a robust process of fracking. Pelley is desperate to cultivate the general public and tap into new, younger markets with fast-food golf instead of preaching to the converted. Whether fireworks on the tee, music on the range and microphones on the players will do this remains to be seen. But there’s no harm in trying.

Golf is a game where one size doesn’t have to fit all and the scalable nature of it is an attribute that should be utilised while always safeguarding the sport’s integrity and preserving all those strengths that make it great. The T20 format of cricket, for instance, has co-existed quite happily with the traditional Test since it was formulated over a decade ago.

On the various tours, golf essentially takes the same four-day format around the globe and hopes it will be greeted with wonder by the masses. With wraparound schedules and no real start or end to a season, the staple diet of 72-hole strokeplay week-in, week-out can make for decidedly stodgy fare for the casual consumer. You can’t have a spell-binding, unforgettable finale like last year’s duel at Troon between Henrik Stenson and Phil Mickelson every Sunday, after all. Of course, the straight matchplay format brings its own problems in the sense that it doesn’t sit well with sponsors or television companies. The relevance of the event is highly dependent on who is actually playing. The lose-and-yer-oot nature of it means the star attractions can depart on the first day, hence why certain matchplay contests have dabbled with a variety of group stages and round-robin phases in an almost desperate battle to keep folk hanging about.

This week’s pick-and-mix offering should make for interesting viewing. It’s a trial, there will possibly be some errors but at least it’s something different. Variety, as they say, is the spice of life.