This is the time of year when golfers have to cherish every chance they have to play a round. The temperatures are dipping for people who live in the eastern part of the U.S. and Canada – and didn’t it seem like only yesterday when the thermometer was going through the roof in what became the hottest summer on record? It certainly felt like that. And in a way, we were all spoiled. Yes, we sweated like crazy and had to drink tons of water to stay hydrated, and when we finished didn’t the prospect of sipping that first beer make you want to make a beeline for the clubhouse?

Bill Murray and golf go hand in hand. Whether he’s playing the game seriously or just to have a hoot, there’s no mistaking Murray on the course. He has dressed in some of the craziest outfits if for no other reason than to have fun and make people laugh. After all, that’s what comic actors do, and although he is known for his career on Saturday Night Live and the many characters he portrayed, anyone who follows the game of golf knows Bill Murray for the role of the irreverent groundskeeper Carl Speckler in the movie Caddyshack. He was terrifically funny trying various ways to kill gophers, along with the one scene in which he is dressed in rain boots and a rain cap taking some shots on the practice range, pretending to be the Cinderella story groundskeeper trying to win the Masters.

Before, during and after the tournament, American golf fans became the big story about the 41st edition of the Ryder Cup – perhaps even bigger than the victory by the team they supported – because of their behavior. Pete Willett, brother of 2016 Masters champion Danny Willett, took a broadsided swipe at American golf fans in a column written in the National Club Golfer before the competition commenced. He called them a “baying mob of imbeciles” and put his support behind the European squad.

Legendary golfer Arnold Palmer has died, reminding us yet again that the great ones in sports cannot live forever. Mortality does, indeed, have a time limit. Earlier this year, we mourned the loss of boxer Muhammad Ali and hockey player Gordie Howe, two individuals who helped make their sports great, both with what they did as athletes, but more important what they did as people. Now we are feeling that aching feeling again following the passing of Arnold Palmer, who died on Sunday at age 87. Maybe he made his mark on golf, but he stitched his way into fabric of all of sports.

Imagine being paid to write about golf! Dave Perkins covered the sport in his 40 years as a sports writer, a good chunk of that with the Toronto Star. Perkins, whom I had the privilege of working beside occasionally during my 21 years with the Toronto Sun, covered 58 golf majors, 10 Ryder and/or Presidents Cups, and countless tournaments of one sort or another in the sport. He also had opportunities to play some of the best courses in the world and interview the best of the best from numerous eras.

When the Ladies Professional Golf Association tour stopped off recently at Whistle Bear in Cambridge, Ontario, Canada, New Zealand-born horse trainer Tony O’Sullivan had a chance to meet fellow Kiwi Lydia Ko. O’Sullivan, who has been living in Canada full-time since 2004, is a club member at Whistle Bear. He wanted to take his daughter, Mackenzie, to the Pro-Am event at the club to meet the competitors and to talk to Ko. “There was no one there and Lydia took the time to talk to us for 10 minutes,” he told me. “We didn’t talk about golf. We talked about New Zealand and how beautiful it is. It was awesome. She’s a really, really nice person. People say ‘Lydia Ko is unbelievable to watch. She’s so relaxed and nice.’ And she is. It was pretty cool. Not just because she’s a sports star, but she’s genuinely a good person; she genuinely wanted to talk to you.”

Superstar hockey agent Don Meehan loves to golf, he just wishes he had more time to do it. As the pre-eminent representative for many of the National Hockey League star players, including Steven Stamkos, P.K. Subban, Drew Doughty, Erik Karlsson, Phil Kessel, Zach Parise and Corey Perry, to name a few of them, the Canadian-based agent who frequently travels to various parts of the world to do business is simply too busy to regularly get out on the course.

A funny thing happened to me on the way to a golf game a few days ago – it had to be called off because of rain. In one of the hottest and driest summers on record, I just happened to pick a day in which it rained. On the one hand, I felt disappointed because if you’re a golfer there’s nothing worse than getting excited about getting out on the course, only to find out rain ruins it. As bad as I felt about having to take a rain check, I also felt good because I have to believe it has been a trying season for golf course operators, who have probably had to work extra hard to prevent their courses from drying up. There’s only so much sprinkling you can do.

You can say Inbee Park won the gold medal in the 2016 Olympic Games in Brazil, but really the biggest winner was women’s golf. On the biggest and most important stage in the world, the women aced it – literally and metaphorically. Park, the 28-year-old from South Korea who earlier this year met the criteria for the World Golf Hall of Fame, was a well-deserving winner, trouncing the field by five strokes and a score of 16-under-par.