Fifty-three-year-old Scot, Jim Shreenan, looking at a set of statistics as we talk, stabs a finger at the part that lists the number of registered golfers in the United States.
'Twenty-four million!'
Jim repeats the figure, savouring it. 'Just imagine what it would mean if they all bought my spectacles! I'd be a millionaire!'
Hard-headed business people involved with his wrap-around sunglasses that are opaque except for a couple of holes, reckon he's well on the way.
Jim's invention made world headlines with the (latest) answer to the elusive secret sought by golfer tragics for years: a device that forces you to keep your head down so that club meets ball so perfectly it soars to unheard of distances. Handicap 18, the Melbourne creator of Spot On specs has cut his stroke tally for 18 holes by an incredible 20 shots. He has had enthusiastic approval from Greg Norman when he donned the shades. And Norman's teaching pro Charlie Earp, the guru the pros go to when their game falls apart, said: "They're great - particularly on the short game."
Now distributors in the US, UK, Greece, Malaysia, India, Korea, Guam, New Zealand - and of course Australia - are queuing up at the Taiwan factory production-line to get a slice of the action.
Toolmaker Jim started fiddling with glass and plastic spectacles seven years ago, blackening all but two focussing slits in each lens. A frustrated golf hacker, he had taken 10 lessons with his local pro, "but I found I wasn't improving very much. The problem remained: how could he keep his head in the same position on the backswing and on the way down as his club descended to strike the ball?
He searched through his library of hundreds of golf magazines, instruction books, and watched videos of himself, Greg Norman and Jack Nicklaus. But nothing helped. He still kept moving his head.
Jim, who migrated to Australia 35 years ago, had played the famous Scottish courses of St. Andrews, Troon and Carnoustie. And as he stood on St. Andrews' first tee "on a perfect, magical afternoon," he dreamed that one day golf would no longer remain a frustration; that he would discover the solution to a problem that had even had mad golfers tie a string to their heads, leading to a hook in the crotch, so they would keep their heads motionless. (If you moved your head the pain was intense).
At the age of 40 Jim had taken on a second career as a dog chiropractor/naturopath, on top of being a chief inspector of government aircraft. But it still gave him time to wrestle with bad golf. Then one day, working on yet another pair of sunglasses, it came to him. He blacked out all but a small area in each lens and hurried off to the golf driving range. Back went the 3-iron, down it came and WHOOOSH! The ball sailed further and straighter than he had ever hit one before.
He hit ball after ball. And peering through the holes on the way back and on the way through, he repeatedly hit good balls, proving his theory.
He took the specs to his club and others tried them. And word flashed through Melbourne's golf world.
A newspaper sent a reporter to see Jim on a quiet news day and it published a typical "golf nut" item that made non-golfers guffaw, but dedicated golfers even firmer in their resolve to find the grail.
A Brisbane import-export firm, The Price Group and Company, saw the report and called Jim and he was soon signing a $250,000 contract for his shades to be exploited world-wide.
Ms. Anne Harper, a partner in the company, said: 'He will certainly make a good living out of it. There is nothing anything like it in the world. I am a weekend hacker and have hit a few buckets of balls wearing the glasses and I am thrilled with the result.' But the miracle shades have already hit a snag: the ruling body of golf, The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews has advised that they may well be a breach of golf rules. They were "an artificial device to aid stroke making," said an official. 'They are giving us a bit of a hard time,' admitted Ms. Harper.
Jim Shreenan is unfazed. 'I am not going to fight that in the immediate future. That's what they said at first about the broomstick putter and now pros use them all over the world.'
Anyhow, he's got a trick up his sleeve. To conform with the rules he only puts them on as he sets up for his drive, getting the tee-marker in sight through the slit. Then he takes them off and puts them in his pocket, his head remaining steadily focussed on the ball through to the marker. He would not, however, use them in a competition.
'Many of my golfing friends at Patterson River Club have them already and they're adding 20 to 30 metres to their shots. With them you can fade the ball or draw it at will. I played with a reporter who had borrowed clubs and hadn't played seriously for years. He got amazing distances with great accuracy.'
Rita, Jim's non-golfing wife, has patiently watched him over the years hacking up scores of pairs of cheap and expensive sunglasses. 'Wrap-arounds, clip-ons, raise-ups, fold-ups, you name it,' sighs Jim.
The final production-line Spot Ons have high quality, scratch-and-shatter resistant lenses and are distortion free. They will sell for just over $100 in Australia, 55 pounds in the UK.
