Which particular part of ridiculous dress codes irritate you?

Mark: Let’s discuss dress codes again. I recently played somewhere where only white socks are allowed when wearing shorts which meant I spent most of the pre-round preamble hiding from anyone as I had taken the bold step of wearing some grey ankle socks. Which particular part of ridiculous dress codes irritate you?

Keel: Shorts that have to be a specific length above the knee, a certain colour of sock, a shirt that has to have a collar. It’s all a load of rubbish really isn’t it? At grassroots level, dress codes should be scrapped.

Steve: White socks. Why is this even a thing? What does it matter if they are red, blue, green, black, orange? Socks are socks. And yet some people are going to give themselves a stroke whinging on about dress codes. What part irritates me? Everything. No one is suddenly going to turn up to play golf in tracksuit bottoms if you relax the code. Just let it go.

Dan: All of it. There should be no such thing as a dress code in golf. But I’ve spoken about this at length…

Keel: Bubba Watson has all but locked in a Ryder Cup spot with his three wins this year, but to me, him being on the side is a big advantage to Europe. In future, should qualification be scrapped and the team be made up purely of captain’s picks?

Steve: A team full of captain’s picks – this is a rocky road. What qualification, generally, does is highlight the most consistent players. This is why Bubba will make the team. As we saw at Hazeltine, he probably wouldn’t get a pick otherwise. Part of the genius in creating a winning team is man-management. Off you go, Jim.

Dan: Certainly, Bubba will require some careful and skilled man-management because none of his captains to date have got the best or anything close to it out of him. On the 12 captain’s picks point, I think that does create its own problems and puts a lot of pressure on the captain to be fair and to be seen to be fair. I’m not sure it would make that much difference anyway as the guys qualifying automatically are going to be obvious picks.

Mark: I like your confidence in him being a weakness. I’m quite wary of how well he’s qualified and how much he wants to prove a point. The ideal is to have 12 picks or just go off the world rankings but that takes away far too much of the build-up. You have to have some incentive to support the European Tour, I always think 4-4-4 is the best way and gives the captain plenty of scope to pick some superstars if they don’t make it on merit.