Arnold Palmer’s Pro-Shot Golf - A Toy I Did Get for Christmas

I’ve always thought golf was a great game and one that is unfortunately spoiled by golfers. What I mean by that is that I always found it difficult to separate the game from the players. My experience of those who played was that they were all a bit, well, boring, materialistic and overly concerned with their pecking order in the social rankings. One of the many abiding memories of my previous career was the many dull Monday mornings tolerating office colleagues as they went over their Sunday golf round in meticulous detail such that it was lunch time before any work got done. Such was their passion for the game, or at least its trappings, you would think they were experts but it never seemed to be matched by their ability, judging by their large handicaps.

Yet I have great childhood memories going up the the putting green at "Swannie Pnds" with my granddad. When I got a bit older I graduated to playing "pitch and putt" at Balgay Park in Dundee and at Springfield Park in Arbroath. I also was the proud owner and proprietor of my very own six-hole putting green in the back garden. It was built by my very own granddad and being a plumber, he cut a length of plastic downpipe into sections to make cups for each hole. During the summer I used to tend to my course by cutting the grass then going over it with a big concrete roller, again made by my granddad. Looking back on it I’m sure it was just a ploy to get out of cutting the grass himself. I also had my own putter, a cut-down wooden shafted putter that my granddad had acquired for free from some house he was working at. Golf balls were acquired free of charge by plundering the rough at Caird Park Golf Course.

In recent years there has been some great golf games for computers. I remember my late father-in-law liked to play Actua Golf on the Play Station 1. I have Tiger Woods 2009 for the Wii and it is a superb game. Golf translates really well into these computer simulations.

In the pre-digital, mechanical era, Arnold Palmer’s Pro-Shot Golf was a popular and successful game. This is a toy I did get for Christmas one year. It consisted of a miniature golf club with a mini Arnold Palmer figure at the foot of the club. You pulled a little lever on the handle of the club to operate Arnold’s swing. It also had little interchangeable clubs, woods, irons, putter etc. With a little tee and a foam green you turned your living room into a golf course.

This game was published by Marx Games in the mid 1960's but it was re-released in 2006 for the 21st Century golf market. Now called just Pro-Shot Golf, the game has been updated with modernised clubs, logos etc but in essence it looks pretty much the same. It’s good to see that some things from yester year can make a revival.