Two major events took place in Bermuda over the past week.

The first National Heroes Day celebrated the life of Dame Lois Browne-Evans, who was a true trailblazer, both for women and for black Bermudians.

The second event was the PGA Grand Slam of Golf, which has seen four of the world's best golfers battle it out over the fairways and greens of the Mid-Ocean Club for a worldwide television audience.

These two events, apart from the fact that they took place at virtually the same time, may appear to have little to do with one another.

But because of the timing, they are inextricably tied together.

What makes no sense is to declare a public holiday for National Heroes Day for a Monday, only to hold the holiday on a Sunday instead.

Why do this? The only conceivable reason was to allow a free day for the PGA Grand Slam Pro-Am, which various local leaders, including the Premier, were participating in.

Although no one appears to be that concerned about this, it does give the appearance of cynicism.

But then, the whole National Heroes Day holiday has been a somewhat cynical exercise from the beginning. At the risk of seeming churlish – and without diminishing Dame Lois' achievements in any way – it still seems unfair that people like Dr. E. F. Gordon, Mr. W.L. Tucker and Sir Henry Tucker and Dr. Pauulu Kamarakafego (Roosevelt Brown) should be passed over when Bermuda's first ever national hero was named.

Now a bipartisan committee will be chosen to select the next national hero, but that begs the question of why that was not done this year.

Still, what's done is done, and the problem will not reoccur next year since the PGA Grand Slam of Golf will take place on October 19 and the public holiday is scheduled for October 12.

Indeed, Dr. Brown has managed to secure the event for a second consecutive two-year period, although it will now move to Port Royal, where extensive and expensive renovations are due to be completed by January.

While in many ways it is fitting that an event sponsored heavily by the Bermuda Government should take place on a publicly owned golf course, it is hard not to have some sympathy for the members of the Mid Ocean Club, who have worked exceptionally hard to put on a superbly staged event for the last two years.

And as fine a course as Port Royal was and presumably will be (at a cost of more than $10 million), it is to be hoped that it will present as fine a picture to the potential visitors as Mid Ocean has.

Having said that, it is still not entirely clear that the $1.5 million that Bermuda pays to stage the event is worth it, regardless of the pleasure it brings to see great golfers at work.

Government, the PGA and TNT have been quite reluctant to say how many people in the US watch the event, although it drew around 1.5 million US viewers when it was staged in Hawaii.

It does also draw audiences as far as away as Australia and South Africa, but the public has generally been fobbed off with expressions like "watched by millions of people in 100 countries"; that's not good enough.

Dr. Brown also claimed last year that media reporting on the event was the equivalent of some $7 million in advertising. That may be so, but it has to be said that the results have not shown up in Bermuda's ever declining tourism figures.

Of course, the event has not had the benefit of the "Tiger factor" in either of the last two years.

If Tiger Woods recovers well from surgery and wins a Grand Slam event and decides to come to this event, then we will all be singing a different tune.