One of the most entertaining trends YouTube makers have latched onto is turning contraptions from the movies into real gadgets. We’ve seen Spider-Man’s web shooters recreated with an impressive level of functionality, but Nick O’Hara’s club-launching golf bag is a near perfect recreation of an over-the-top gag from Caddyshack.
The film, written and directed by Ghostbusters’ Harold Ramis, features a stuffy country club over-run with uncultured caddies but the movie’s standout character (besides Bill Murray’s Carl Spackler) was comedian Rodney Dangerfield playing Al Czervik, a wealthy real estate developer with a loud personality and endless one-liners. In addition to bringing some levity to the links, Czervik also hit the greens with some expensive tech, including a golf bag featuring drink dispensers, a TV, and an automatic club launcher that somehow isn’t a fixture on courses today.
O’Hara recreated the club shooter for Rich Shiels, another YouTube personality best known for putting weird golf gadgets to the test and the machine does the impossible by making golf actually look kind of fun? Powered by a Ryobi air compressor hidden away inside the machine’s base, the launcher pressurizes to 120 PSI and uses a piston to send clubs flying out of a ring of plastic tubes.
Like the barrel of a gatling gun, the assortment of clubs rotates so that it fires the one specifically needed by a golfer. They can either make that selection themselves using a wireless remote control, or ask the launcher to serve as their caddy and make club recommendations for them based on voice commands made to a smart speaker. For example, a golfer can say they’re 150.88 m from a hole that’s uphill with strong winds working against them, and the launcher will crunch the numbers and send the best club needed flying in their direction.
O’Hara’s creation features other useful golf bag upgrades too, like an automatic ball launcher for those unfortunate times when a shot is shanked into the drink, and even a beverage launcher for golfers on the back nine who just can’t wait to get to the 19th hole.