As the tide turns, so now does the golf season. The four major championships of the year are consigned to history. Zach Johnson, Ángel Cabrera and Padraig Harrington are enjoying the feeling of winning their first; Tiger Woods is celebrating his thirteenth.

With the approach of September, the rhythm of golf changes. From January to August it has been strokeplay almost without exception but on Tuesday will come the announcement of Helen Alfredsson’s Europe Solheim Cup team to play the United States in Sweden next month. This matchplay event will have been preceded five days earlier by the Walker Cup contested by the amateurs of Great Britain and Ireland and the US at Royal County Down, Northern Ireland. The month will be rounded out by more matchplay — this time the Presidents Cup in Canada where the US take on the Rest of the World outside Europe. For most of the 30 days of September, therefore, matchplay rules. Am I permitted an enthusiastic hooray?

Too much strokeplay, like too much work, makes Jack a dull boy. It is so remorseless. Every stroke must be marked down, usually in pencil, on a 6in x 4in card. While strokeplay can yield the excitement of a finish such as that in this year’s Open Championship at Carnoustie, it can also be repetitive, remorseless, boring and no fun. Keeping score, too, can sometimes be beyond the game’s best players, as Sergio GarcÍa discovered at the US PGA Championship when he didn’t notice that Boo Weekley, his playing partner, had written down a four for him on the 17th instead of a 5. Result? Disqualification. Adiós Sergio.

Matchplay is easier, quicker and more enjoyable, in my view. Three of us gathered at the romantically named Meadows of Dan, 3,000 feet up in the hills of Virginia last week. We were intent on a rest and recovery mission after the US PGA Championship in Tulsa. Did we pick up our pencils and cards and note down every stroke when we played? No. We would still be playing if we had. We played a match, taking our strokes from the lowest handicap man present, and 4½ hours after starting, we finished. We were hot, tired and happy. At least the other two were. I lost both times, but thank you for asking.

When Great Britain and Ireland try to regain the Walker Cup on September 8 and 9, it will be foursomes and singles on Saturday and foursomes and singles on Sunday. In matchplay the excitement can be sustained to barely credible levels. For example, when Seve Ballesteros faced Tom Lehman in the singles at the 1995 Ryder Cup he did not find one fairway from the tee on the front nine holes and one drive went only 50 yards. Yet he was still in contention at the turn, albeit only just.

John McPhee, the noted American reporter, wrote a lengthy article in The New Yorker about this year’s US Open, a strokeplay event. It was a piece not unlike Herbert Warren Wind’s majestic essays on golf in that same magazine 25-30 years ago, pieces that are much missed, incidentally. McPhee’s article was a joy from start to finish, unlike the competition itself, which reduced many competitors to a state of shock at the severity of the examination they had been set.

P. G. Wodehouse, Agatha Christie, Stephen Potter, John Updike, Ring Lardner, Richard Ford and Ian Fleming are among those who have written about matchplay golf. Wodehouse filled his golfing stories with characters such as Gladstone Bott, who “fussed about like a hen scratching gravel”, and Bradbury Fisher, who “lashed out with sickening violence in the general direction of the ball”. Fleming’s golf match occurs in Goldfinger and James Bond defeats the villain of that name at St Mark’s, where the professional was Cyril Whiting. This was a nod to a club Fleming would have captained had he not died, Royal St George’s in Sandwich, Kent, where the then professional was Cyril Blacking.

Freddie Tait, an Amateur champion who once drove the 18th green at St Andrews using a gutta-percha ball, put it aptly when he said: “Matchplay is the thing. Strokeplay is so much rifle shooting.” Unless I am much mistaken, spectators who attend any or all these matchplay events in the next five weeks or so will understand precisely what Tait meant. It could be a month to remember.

Ilonen snatches title Mikko Ilonen, of Finland, claimed his second European Tour victory of the year in the Scandinavian Masters in Stockholm yesterday. Ilonen, who won the Indonesia Open in February, birdied the par-three 18th hole at Arlandastad to join Martin Kaymer on six under par as the young German looked on from the tee.

Kaymer then missed the green with his approach and chipped weakly, his effort failing to climb the steep slope up to the putting surface. His double-bogey five dropped him back into a share of second place with Jean-Baptiste Gonnet, Christian Cévaër, Peter Hedblom and Nick Dougherty.