In the Bag! Will's Pro shot Golf

Hi Woodsy, I think this golf bag version predates the Arnold Palmer one. 

Will O.

UK

Arnold Palmer on a Stick

I'm pretty sure I had this set as a kid. Arnold on a pole for that true golfing experience! What an idea! 

I've seen other versions but this is the original Marx.

Did you Arnold Palmer?

GOODBYE TO MY CLUBS

I've just sold my old golf clubs to a work colleague.

It was poignant moment for me. not because I was serious about golf but because it closed the lid finally on a specific period of my life, when I enjoyed playing golf with a group of friends in the mid to late 1990's.

I had another life back then, a captain of industry with a career, young and full of energy. Playing golf once a week after work was the perfect way to relax with workmates.

We didn't go far. Just up the road to the nearest public golf course. We were what I called 'hackers'. None of us very good but all decent enough to get round 18 holes and have lots of fun along the way. Some of my shots were inspired. Most were terrible.

I would say we enjoyed playing golf as a group of  four friends for a good five years and occasionally ventured further afield to other public courses. We usually had a curry afterwards in the curry house nearest the course, where the highs and lows of play was discussed over popadoms and a pickle tray to start.

Looking back a quarter of a century they were great times. We had stressful and demanding jobs, all working for the same company and golf allowed us to leave work early and be friends. Anything and everything can be shared when you play an 18 hole golf course.

Sadly I am no longer in touch with any of my golfing pals. The beginning of the end was when the first of our troop left the company we worked at. This wasn't so bad as he made an effort to keep coming to play. When the second of us left it became more difficult and when I departed in 2005 the game was over. Despite trying we simply couldn't re-capture those glorious years of hacking in the midweek evening sunshine followed by a Dansak.

One of our party, the eldest, is now sadly in a home for Parkinsons sufferers and I have lost touch with the other two members.

So it was a bitter-sweet moment as I handed over my old bag, trolley and clubs this afternoon. It was 3pm as well, the time we would have knocked off work and headed out to the course in the late afternoon sun of the late 1990's.

As I watched my gear leave in someone else's car today I realised I was saying goodbye to old friends. Friends who I'm unlikely to ever see again now and a glorious time when we were our younger selves.

I sensed too an uncertainty of what can and will ever replace those days. 

I suppose this is the essential sadness at the heart of all nostalgia.

Have you had to bring parts of your old life to a close readers?

A pic of my old clubs on our recent car boot stall. They didn't sell. No-one even looked!

RIP ARNOLD PALMER: HE GAVE US TOY GOLF TOO

Golf legend Arnold Palmer sadly passed away today at the grand old age of 87. An icon of the game of golf his influence was even felt on my childhood in remotest Lancashire during the Sixties, when one Christmas I received a huge golf toy.

It wasn't any old thing either. It was the Arnold Palmer Pro Shot golf set by Marx. An amazing toy, it has a miniature Arnold at the end of a golf club contraption. By turning the handle you could get mini Arnold to play shots for you! It was a stroke of genius.

You can get an idea of what it was like to use on this You Tube clip.

Did you have this set readers?

Arnold Palmer RIP.