Many, if not most, of the golf inventions that have been patented over the years touch on the frivolous, even absurd. There are thousands of patents on golf inventions, going back at least 100 years in this country. I once counted 437 patents issued on golf items from 1927 through 1929 alone. And more have kept pouring into the U.S. Patent Office every year since then.
Let us count some of the ways people have dreamed to solve the unsolvable.
In 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. Whether it was a "Rah-Rah" cheer, a "Huzzah," a "Yeah" is not known.
Can you imagine what a shock it would be to hear, in the middle of your backswing, a golf club talking to you? It would have to come as a surprise, given how seldom we take it back perfectly, and the unexpected noise, however well-meaning, would surely wreck the rest of the effort. Right?
This is not to say all golf inventions border on the ridiculous. Some have made significant contributions to the game.
The sandwedge, for example. The steel shaft, for another. The three-piece, rubber-core golf ball might be the best to date. And don't forget the wooden tee, first devised by a Boston dentist named George Grant, who didn't think enough of it to take out a patent. Another dentist came up with his own version -- Dr. William Lowell of New Jersey, who did get a patent and made it a staple of golf when he convinced Walter Hagen and Joe Kirkwood Jr. to use it on one of their exhibition tours in the 1920s.
You might think Lowell hit a gold mine. 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.
Of the 437 golf patents issued from 1927 through 1929, 64 were for golf tees. Here are some variations to such a simple device.
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 on 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. Aerodynamic expertise eventually proved the theory wrong, and the leaning tee never got to market.
A few years ago, someone came out with a tee made of biodegradable fertilizer. Trouble was, it was never firm enough to go into the ground without bending. That leads to the 1925 tee invention.
The idea was to use regular paper as a tee in order to save trees, and keep splintered scraps 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 was ecology-minded, as well. He recommended that readily dissolvable paper be used. He suggested the paper be green, so it would blend into the grass and not be visually obtrusive. This tee inventor also suggested that the paper tees carry advertisements.
Not surprisingly, at least to this chronic three-jacker, a large percentage of all the inventions have to do with putting.
A putter was invented with a motor, a push button, and a fly-wheel on the toe of the blade. When ready to take it back, the golfer pushes the button to activate the fly-wheel, the spinning of which is meant to produce a gyroscopic effect that kept the blade square during the stroke itself. No joke. It's in the U.S. Golf Association Museum.
Mirrors, appropriately enough, have been enlisted to enhance our game. Someone came up with a putter with two mirrors attached, one to see the line of putt along the ground, the other at an angle to reveal the cup. The idea is to relieve the golfer of having to keep looking up to make sure he is aiming correctly. It was supposed to prevent the possibility of disorientation from having to keep twisting your head to see the target.
There was a string-faced putter. It was banned because the face of a golf club must be smooth and flat, for one thing. For another, the strings conceivably could be tightened or loosened during a round to fit the circumstances of the moment -- fast downhiller, loosen strings, for instance. Adjustable clubs are not legal.
In 1966, a patent was issued on a pair of glasses to be worn by golfers to control head movement during the swing. The glasses were opaque, except for two small apertures, one 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.
What do you do when the ball disappears from view? Stop your swing and start all over again? It could take hours for someone to finally hit the ball. Not to worry. 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.
Editor's note: Historian Al Barkow appears every month on GolfWeb and PGATOUR.COM.