About Golfers' Mate

Golfers' Mate is an ingenious, inexpensive golfing aid that is a welcome addition to any golf bag. Made of hard wearing zinc with a hard chrome steel blade and marker this little gem will give pleasure for many years. It is a perfect gift and will be appreciated by golfers of every level.

For corporate or special occasions Golfers' Mate can be personalised and is an excellent advertising medium.

This multi function tool could soon become the swiss army knife of the golfer!

With one of these in your bag you have a pitch mark repairer (divot tool) a club rest, a ball marker and that most essential item... a pencil sharpener!

Golfers' Mate Origins

In 2009 I had the great honour of being Club Captain of Tidworth Garrison Golf Club. As Captain I was playing a lot more golf than I usually would and I became aware of problems caused when nobody in the group has a working pencil.

Golf pencils are generally small and kept in the bag alongside markers, balls etc and consequently many get broken. I had an occasion in my year when not one of our four-ball had a pencil that worked or a sharpener. Having to memorise scores for 18 holes can be quite tricky but we did our best and strangely enough we all had our best ever round. Two of our group managed to break the course record!

However having returned to the club house we discovered that pencil sharpeners were in very short supply. The pro shop didn't sell them and I realised there was a sharpener famine! On my next trip to town I purchased two and within two weeks I had managed to lose them both. Un-deterred by my obvious aversion to the things I bought another and taped it to my pitch mark repairer. Bingo! Although it was a little cumbersome I realised this was a system that worked. Realising that I had solved the sharpener problem I tried to design a pitchfork that incorporated the thing within its body. What had started out as a whimsical notion and idea very soon became a mission.

Golfers' Mate was becoming a reality. I then went through the arduous process of designers and prototypes and quickly realised just what an ingenious device a pencil sharpener is. The tolerances are so fine that engineering from scratch is a nightmare. However, once we had a prototype we then instructed patent lawyers and registered the design patent and trade mark. The next stage was the tooling which again was very expensive and extremely stressful. After many false starts and modifications we finally got it right and can now produce up to 6000 per week from our manufacturers in Andover. The icing on the cake was being given the opportunity to appear on the BBC programme Dragons Den. After a very shaky start I like to think that I gave a fairly good account of myself. Time will tell!

So there we are. After a year of design, false starts and heartache we have a product that we are immensely proud of. My business partner Jamie Harwood and I have now started on a new project that we will have ready next year. In the meantime... Enjoy Golfers' Mate!