I Loved My Hired Golf Clubs So Much I Nearly Bought A Set

Over the years I have travelled both abroad and domestically fairly extensively in the line of work. And yes, I am classing playing golf courses to then write about them as an entirely legitimate occupation!

In the past, you tended to take your own clubs everywhere with you, lugging a heavy, unwieldy flight bag around airports and out to hire car lots at great cost to your back and shoulders.

And although I have recently been fortunate enough to acquire a Sun Mountain ClubGlider Meridian flight cover – a truly ingenious invention that has transformed the process from burden to complete breeze – for various reasons, I do sometimes have to put myself at the mercy of the resort hire set.

This can be a game of real roulette, with some hire clubs battered into oblivion, others fairly decent and others still fresh out of the box to start the new season if you happen to time it right.

On a recent trip to Penha Longa, home to one of the best courses in Portugal, I drew a fairly reasonable hire set straw. Yes some of the clubs showed a little more wear than you might ideally like in your own set – the result of fairly casual headcover use over the years, I imagine – but they were all Titleists and just a generation older than the current range.

After buggying down to the 1^st tee on the Monastery course, I pondered what club for the shot in hand – a par 3 of 155 yards, slightly downhill but with perhaps a three-club wind into and off the left. I looked down at my bag and selected the Titleist T200 6-iron. With no warm-up and a few days since I’d last played, I wasn’t expecting much in testing conditions.

I flushed it on to the green, two-putted for par, smiled to myself and drove on to the 2^nd hole. Over the course of the next two days and 27 holes, that pattern was largely repeated, with flushed strikes far exceeding even minor mishits.

I liked the blade length, loved the thickness of the topline and felt really…