By Rob Hodgetts BBC Sport at Royal Troon

Troon can be a crowded place for the players

Golf is a simple game involving player, ball, some clubs and a hole.

But if the scene at a major championship is anything to go by, it is one of the more labour intensive leisure pursuits ever devised.

On the course, an army of auxiliary staff follow every match.

This phalanx of scorers, marshalls, bunker rakers, assistant marshalls, media types, scoreboard carriers, rules officials and deputy vice-marshalls (probably) trails each group, employed in some way in the process of getting the ball down the hole.

On the practice ground, which presumably was originally intended for players to practise, it would seem that the hordes of hangers-on also use it a chance to hone their skills.

For every player diligently, or not in Colin Montgomerie's case, smashing balls into the ether, a huddle will form around his bag, chewing the fat and trying to look as if they are somehow involved.

Of course, one is likely to be the caddie, and you can't blame him for that, it's his desk after all.

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But of the others? No-one really knows.

Some, but not all, are Dougie Donnelly, loitering in the hope of a not-particularly revealing chat for the television cameras.

Others are likely to be an agent or three, one of the wife's distant cousins and Jos Vanstiphout, Ernie Els' (among others) Belgian sports shrink.

The practice habits of the players confirm in some cases what we thought we already knew about them, and in others they reveal hitherto unknown character traits.

There is more to Colin Montgomerie than the media caricature

That Nick Faldo, the ageing rock star dressed all in black with dark shades and blonde highlights, is an assiduous tinkerer of the swing is legendary.

But Montgomerie's tendency of hitting one ball every 15 minutes, in between a laugh and a joke with anyone who is passing, would suggest a rather more happy-go-lucky persona than the one-man Mount Vesuvius we see on the course.

The putting green, the last stop before teeing off, is much the same scene, only they don't hit the ball quite as far.

The main reason for spending some time watching the stars on the practice ground, of course, is to glimpse your heroes in the flesh, and marvel at their prowess close up.

But you won't learn much there - other than the fact that modern oversize drivers should come with ear defenders as standard.

The only thing the range will tell you is that these guys, even the blokes who miss the cut by a country mile, hit the ball so consistently well that the game looks ridiculously simple.

Feature: Curtis' credentials found wanting

All, that is, except defending champion Ben Curtis, who thinned two bunkers shots at head height into the ticket queue before slinking off.