Brooks Koepka will start as one of the favourites as golf heads for the Playboy Mansion

There’s a certain property next to the 14th tee here at Los Angeles Country Club that plays nicely to the dominant theme of these strange golfing times.

If this is the era of uneasy unions between squabbling neighbours, then how very appropriate that the first major of golf’s brave new world will be contested from Thursday in amusing proximity to what was once the Playboy Mansion.

It changed hands shortly before Hugh Hefner’s death in 2017, but if you walk that edge of the course, situated in one of the most exclusive and tightly-wound clubs in America, you can still hear the monkeys and birds from the zoo he installed in the back garden.

It was never a popular presence with those who run this place, and a story is still told about the time Hefner once broached the subject of membership, with the sweetener that he would offer up the occasional Playboy Bunny. The gates didn’t open.

All of which gives us a suitable backdrop to these championships, given the week has so far been dominated by one question: what on earth just happened? That narrative will now be parked, albeit temporarily, in favour of a more regular kind of unknown: who will profit amid the madness when there is a breakout of sport?

‘I enjoy the chaos,’ was the Brooks Koepka take, and that ability to keep his head while all others are losing theirs in politics might well be a deciding factor in LA, where he chases his sixth major and a second in succession. 

His streak between 2017 and 2019, in those pre-injury days when he won four majors in eight starts, was the hottest in golf since Tiger Woods and the events of the Masters, where he was runner up, and the US PGA Championship last month, which he won, indicate we could be entering a similar period of dominance.

That two of his five biggest victories came at the US Open demonstrates his affinity for these types of courses, where the US Golf Association has occasionally drawn a wonky line between what is a fair test and what is daft. The North Course, with its rapid, sloping fairways and dense rough, has so far drawn favourable reviews from the protagonists, including Koepka.

He will start as the favourite and a victory here would support the growing view that he is the finest player of his generation. Owing to recent events, it is inevitable such a feat would be seen through the prism of his commitments to LIV, in much the same way that discussions around Rory McIlroy nose on the futility of his work in defence of the PGA Tour.

When Koepka said on Tuesday that he has relished the sight of his rivals losing themselves in the political chicanery of their sport, the mind went immediately to McIlroy. No player on either side gave more to those rows and the burden has been extreme.

In a technical sense, his game at least appears to be stabilising from the mess of Augusta, with improved driving and putting a factor in two top-10s on the PGA Tour in successive weeks. However, this is a course that places a premium on the second shot and his wedges have been a relative weakness. Overcoming those issues on a course he had not played until this week would be tricky in ideal times.

These are anything but, and yet a first major win for McIlroy since 2014 would be monumentally uplifting for the game.

A more comfortable proposition would be Jon Rahm, who has been beneath his best since winning Augusta, but he has looked strong in his practise rounds. As ever, the world No 2 has the all-round game to crush anyone and the same would be said of Scottie Scheffler, whose tee-to-green statistics are remarkable. In those areas, he is unmatched, but he has been held back recently by a stone-cold putter.

Like Koepka, but dissimilar to Rahm and McIlroy, the world No 1 has shown indifference to the wider soap opera of his sport. Like Koepka, it feels as though he has struck upon the smartest way to navigate the chaos. Like Hefner and this place, they will all make for fascinating neighbours across the next four days.