The Hitler Trophy (Floodlit Dreams, £9.99), lovingly crafted by former Daily Mail and Independent writer Alan Fraser, is a timely offering which details the history of golf and the Olympics and also pursues – and appears ultimately to solve – an enduring mystery regarding Der Fuhrer and the golf tournament held in Germany shortly after the 1936 Berlin Games to contest the Trophy of the title.

 It also makes clear that the attitude to the Olympics expressed last month by Northern Ireland’s four-times Major champion Rory McIlroy – ambivalence bordering on indifference – is an echo of similar sentiments voiced by those within the golfing establishment at the turn of the last century, when the game made its only appearances in the Games so far, in 1900 and 1904.

Australia’s Adam Scott, the world No7, was the first to voice the concerns which have clearly been widely held when he announced in April that playing in the first Olympic golf tournament to have been held in 112 years would, regrettably, not fit in with his “extremely busy playing schedule”.

Scott has now been joined on the Regretful Absentee list by more than 20 others, including the top four of fellow Australian Jason Day, US golfers Dustin Johnson and Jordan Speith, and Northern Ireland’s Rory McIlroy, who have between them won six of the last 11 Majors.

The last four all cited fears over the Zika virus which has been prevalent in Brazil in recent months, although McIlroy has since been painfully honest about the fact that he feels golf is an irrelevance at the Olympics, and that he will be watching “events like track and field, swimming, diving – the stuff that matters.”

Fraser’s book traces golf’s Olympic history, and also the history of the Hitler Trophy itself, which in postwar years has taken on something of the quality of the Ring in JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.

Also traced – those who insist Der Fuhrer lost his rag after setting off on the 300-mile car journey from his holiday home in Berchtesgaden to the event in Baden-Baden only to be intercepted by his future British Ambassador Joachim Von Ribbentrop and told that the German pair who had been poised to win had suffered a collapse on the final day and that his trophy was now destined for England.

True or not? You’ll have to read the book to find out.

Naturally enough, the narrative closes on an optimistic note as it contemplates the return of golf to the Olympic arena for the first time since the 1904 St Louis Games, notwithstanding the fact that the 1936 event had the feel of a Games event.

Fraser quotes Speith: “When I was really young, I always thought of the Olympians that walked in the opening ceremonies as the greatest-athletes-in-the-world type of thing…it would be awesome if I could make that team.”

Compare and contrast Speith last month: “This was probably the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make in my life at 22-years-old. I’m a huge believer in Olympic golf. I’m a huge believer in playing for your country.

 “It’s going to be very, very difficult for me to watch. I’ll make it a significant goal to be at Tokyo in 2020.”

If Speith means that, he had better look sharp, as the succession of drop-outs have surely done for the idea that golf – which was voted back into the Games in October 2009 – will extend its tenure beyond Tokyo, with a decision due to be made on that question next year.

Meanwhile even those male golfers who have accepted the opportunity of competing in Rio – in contrast, only one top female golfer has demurred, raising the intriguing prospect of women’s golf enduring at the Games after the men’s version has been voted back out – appear to be in some doubt.

This week US golfer Matt Kuchar revealed that he did not know the format of the tournament he will start in on August 11 as he tweeted: “Now, I may be misinformed or just don’t know. You may have to help me. Is there no team format at all?”

It appeared that Kuchar expected the Olympic format to be similar to that of the World Cup, in which players compete as part of a larger team. At the Olympics, although they will represent their country, they will compete as individuals.

That said, Kuchar has only recently got the Rio call following the withdrawals of compatriots Johnson and Speith.

And as an example of uncertainty within the Olympic golf arena it doesn’t even compare with the circumstance that obtained with the – so far – one and only female Olympic golf champion, Peggy Abbott, who took gold at the Paris Games of 1900:

“Most competitors turning up for the golf competition at Compiègne Golf Club 50 miles north of the centre of Paris at the start of the 20th century had not the faintest idea that they were taking part in the Olympic Games,” writes Fraser.

“Those same competitors departed equally unaware that they had played in the first Olympic golf event. Indeed, somewhat bizarrely, though almost understandably when one considers the chaotic nature of the organisation, Peggy Abbott, the women’s golf champion, died in 1955 still ignorant of the fact that she had been an Olympian and oblivious to her status as the first American woman to win an Olympic gold medal…

“As far as Abbott was concerned, having read an advertisement in a Parisian newspaper, she was entering a nine-hole amateur event for the championship of Paris.”

There was no women’s golf event in the next Games at St Louis. The International Olympic Committee had been unhappy at female inclusion in 1900, and Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Games, described the idea of women competing in the Games as “incorrect, unpractical, uninteresting and unaesthetic.”

In a statement at that time, the IOC announced: “We feel that the Olympic Games must be reserved for the solemn and periodic exaltation of male athleticism with internationalism as a base, loyalty as a means, art for its setting, and female applause as its reward.”

Nice rhetoric. Shame about the sentiments…