When I first saw the Titleist Titanium driver, I thought, "what a beautiful club". On first handling it, the impression was that it was actually a nice, heavy weight, but subsequently I felt it was a bit too light, for me anyway, and I had mixed results when using the club, especially in competition.

To be honest, you couldn't be anything but confident when in the address position. It really is a lovely club to look down on, with a nice big clubhead and a good grip. The club has a lot going for it, but I felt that the degree of loft was probably too steep for me. I'm accustomed to a driver with an 11.5 degree loft, and I felt that you had to be dead accurate when using this to get the best out of it. It wasn't very forgiving, and I did knock it down a couple of times, I'll admit.

But, boy, when you do connect, it goes forever. There were a few occasions when I must have hit the ball 280 yards or 300 yards - but I was certainly guaranteed 250 yards. Distance is not everything, though, so I would have preferred a bit more accuracy.

Due to the size of the base, I felt you had to tee the ball up very high - and when you do that, you can't have full control over the shot. Indeed, I was playing in the Slieve Russell on one occasion with a bloke who was in the American Navy in Vietnam and, after a couple of particularly poor drives, he sidled up to me.

"We have a name for those shots in the States," he said to me.

"What's that?" I inquired.

"We call them GAs - Giraffe's Ass, high and stinky," he replied.

Generally, though, my efforts with the club were pretty mixed. The good ones were really good, the bad ones really bad. Maybe if I'd worked on it a bit harder it could have come good for me.