The roar of the driver and the smell of the tee

Golf: Philip Reid looks at some of the weird and wonderful inventions golf has thrown up

Each year, all around the globe, the number of golf inventions that are patented grows and grows - and while there are many that do indeed benefit players, many others touch on the frivolous, even the absurd. Of course, most of them are attempting to solve the impossible - for the old adage of the workman blaming his tools holds true more in golf than in any other discipline.

So, what kind of ideas have people come up with? How about this, from November 1941? A patent was issued on a golf club that automatically applauded a player who started his backswing correctly. A mechanism within the club - somehow programmed to know that the perfect one-piece takeaway had been executed - sent out an audible cheer.

Maybe it would have helped someone like Colin Montgomerie, who is prone to see and hear things on a golf course that nobody else does. If Monty had become acquainted with some noise on his backswing, maybe he would have one of those cherished majors tucked away by now.

Seriously, though, the thought process behind an invention that makes noise on your backswing does really beggar belief.

Many inventions, however, have made significant contributions to the game. There's the sand wedge, for one; the steel shaft for another; and the three-piece rubber-core golf ball . . . and best of all, and simplest, the wooden tee.

The wooden tee was first devised by a Boston dentist named George Grant, who didn't think enough of it to take out a patent. In newspaper parlance, he was "scooped". Another dentist - Dr William Lowell of New Jersey - came up with his own version. He did get a patent and made it a staple of golf when he persuaded Walter Hagen and Joe Kirkwood jr to use it on one of their exhibition tours in the 1920s.

You might think Lowell hit a goldmine. But he spent most of the rest of his life fighting court battles against knock-offs. He almost never won, and it cost him a fortune. In the US alone, of 437 golf patents issued from 1927 through 1929, 64 were for golf tees.

One version featured a peg with a portion of its cup smoothed out to be the front edge, which was meant to eliminate resistance to the ball's departure.

Another tee was designed to go into the ground at a tilt - a forward tilt, of course, on the theory that the ball would get a head start on its flight and would go farther. Aerodynamics experts eventually proved the theory wrong.

A few years ago, someone came out with a tee made of biodegradable fertiliser. Trouble was, it was never firm enough to go into the ground without bending.

In 1925, someone came up with the idea of using paper tees to save trees and keep splinters out of mower blades. But how do you get a paper tee into the ground? You have a cone-shaped piece of metal into which the paper is fitted and held in place by a clip. Stick the metal cone in the ground, release it from the paper, and voila! The inventor recommended that readily soluble paper be used. He suggested the paper be green, so it would not be visually obtrusive - though the tees might, he suggested, carry advertisements.

Mirrors have been enlisted to enhance our game. Someone came up with a putter with two mirrors attached, one to see the line of the putt along the ground, the other at an angle to reveal the cup. The idea was to relieve the golfer of having to keep looking up to check aim and to prevent possible disorientation from twisting the head to see the target.

Then there was a string-faced putter. It was banned because, for one thing, the face of a golf club must be smooth and flat and, for another, the strings conceivably could be tightened or loosened during a round to fit the circumstances of the moment. Adjustable clubs are not legal.

In 1966, a patent was issued in the US on a pair of glasses to be worn by golfers to control head movement during the swing. The glasses were opaque, except for a small aperture in each lens. At address, with your head properly positioned, you can see the ball through the peepholes. In making the swing, if your head moves out of position, the ball disappears from view. The peek-a-boo glasses never reached your local golf shop. The USGA decreed that any attempt to limit peripheral vision was contrary to the spirit of the game.