I Had A Holiday Romance With A Rental Club... But I Think The Love Might Be Fading

Picture this... you meet a woman on holiday and you instantly click. She just feels right in your arms as you enjoy a fantastic few days laughing, going for long walks and dancing around in the sunshine.

She's all you think about while you're away but you know in the back of your mind it isn't going to last. There are tearful goodbyes and you spend the whole journey home wondering what it would have been like to spend your life together. After all, she made you a better person.

Just as you adjust to normal life again without her, a friend asks if he can introduce you to someone. It's her. The very same person you spent those magical few days with.

You instantly fall back in love and the next several weeks, months and years come so easily for you both.

But then, around three years into the relationship, you begin to hit a few bumps in the road. She doesn't quite have that same spark and the magic feels as though it's slipping away.

You don't feel like you did before. Your head is occasionally being turned by other options. Perhaps it's time for someone new...

Welcome to my life.

Fortunately for my long-suffering girlfriend, I'm not referencing her. Not in the slightest. I still love her more than anything in the world. And we met in our home town, which isn't very sunny at all.

Instead, the aforementioned analogy recounts my experience with a rented TaylorMade Stealth 3-hybrid I used on a press trip to the Algarve back in 2023.

That's right. Those long walks were along fairways and greens and the better person the club made me is unfortunately limited exclusively to the golfing sense.

What I found at first was that I was able to bridge a gap in my game - between 180 and 200 yards - which always posed me significant problems before.

It was like turning up to family gatherings and introducing a new partner before grandma had time to ask "when are you going to bring a nice girl home?"

But the issues I'm now facing with her... I mean, it, are still very real. I went from hitting the ball out of the sweet spot with unerring regularity to considering whether I even take it out anymore.

I just can't seem to use the club. I'm regularly pushing the ball out to the right or slicing it into the trees. For whatever reason, the synchronicity that used to exist has evaporated.

As a result, I've been checking out 5-woods and 7-woods... heck, even a 9-wood caught my attention quite recently. But are they the right options for me?

Do I need something with a bigger head to give me that trust back and comfort me in times of trouble. Would a little more loft lift me up when I'm feeling down on the course, allowing me to hit 190 yard shots again?

Or maybe I need to stick with a 3-hybrid but change the kind of traits I'm looking for in the club?

In all honesty, I know the right thing to do is take the both of us to couple's counselling. A.k.a go for a lesson.

We can work through our issues and I'm sure we'll rediscover those happy days again very soon. After all, you can't artificially create that kind of initial spark.

It would be so much easier to just ask one of my colleagues if they know someone else... something else for me to mess around with for a while.

But, at the end of the day, I know that won't make me happy. I'm sure this is just an awkward patch for the two of us and we'll sail off into the sunset like I always knew we would.

It's like they say, when you know, you know. Y'know?