Breaking barriers - with club in hand

I believe I may have had one of those life-defining moments, writes blogger Dan Wainwright.

You know the sort, it's where you're convinced you've seen something like this on an American sit-com or in a chick-flick romcom with Hugh Grant that you only sat through because your girlfriend promised to let you watch the football down the pub.

It concerns the man who stands a strong chance of one day becoming my father in law.

His daughter went away for a week recently with work and I found myself living on my own for the first time since we moved in together almost a year ago.

After a few days of lounging around in my pants, leaving the loo seat up and generally doing anything "blokey" I could think of I admitted to Kate over the phone that I was "a bit lonely" without her.

It was just the usual sort of thing girlfriends want to hear but it had the same effect as sneezing while inspecting the first domino in a carefully constructed line.

Dutiful to the end my partner called her family and made mention of my alleged boredom to her dad.

Next thing I know I am being offered a go at the driving range.

Golf to me has always held a certain stigma. I see it as a pastime for middle aged men trying to escape from their families or a place for executives to hire and fire while keeping up the pretence of friendship with subordinates who will deliberately miss a shot in order to curry favour.

My girlfriend's sister's fiancé also did the wonderfully traditional act of asking permission to wed while on the golf course.

The course is more than just a way of spoiling a good walk, it's an initiation site.

As we approached the wooden hut of the Ledene Golf Centre in Codsall I half expected Kate's dad to turn round, pull out his nine iron and lunge at me in a duel to test my fighting skills and my worth as a fitting consort for his first born.

It would of course have involved me weaving out of the way in my corduroy jacket, stammering that "well really there, er, must have been some sort of charmingly befuddled misunderstanding" while Geri Halliwell sings "It's Raining Men".

Instead Kate's dad produced a second bag of clubs, the ones he had used to learn the gentlemen's game.

"You can hang on to them, get a bit of practice", he said casually before smacking a ball beyond the 100 yard mark.

In one awkward second he had welcomed me further into his family.

Were this the 1400s he would have handed me a suit of armour bearing the family crest and no doubt offered me a herd of sheep.

And while such a thing would have been more worthy of a blockbuster film if my sword fighting is anything like my swing I'd never have stood a chance against Richard III at Bosworth Field.