Golf attracts all sorts, and leads to all kinds of obsessions. Mostly, the infatuation is simply concerned with the game itself, a compulsion to play as much and as often as is humanly possible. You know, the method of madness that leads to golfing widow - or, indeed, golfing widower - syndrome.

Paul Walsh's golfing obsession wasn't so simple. In his case, it all revolved around an idea that first surfaced in his analytical mind in the mid-1990s. Playing golf one day, Walsh felt that pulling his trolley was putting an unnecessary strain on his shoulder while also aggravating an existing back complaint. His mind started to work overtime, and the result was a zealous quest devoted to a new trolley which, six years on, has found a life as the Air Glide.

On this sunny October day, Walsh stands on the harbour wall of the Malahide Marina. Across the estuary, a couple of hundred yards away, ant-like figures are lugging their trolleys down the 14th fairway of The Island golf course. If many high-powered executives in the industry are to be believed, then, within a number of years, it is likely that such golfers will be using a trolley with the Air Glide device.

It has been described as a revolutionary design, to be placed somewhere between the traditional trolley and the electric trolley. For all the world, it looks like the traditional trolley - but the big difference is an attachment on the handle, in effect an air dampener system containing a spring and hook mechanism, which acts in much the same way as shock absorbers on a car. Scientific tests have shown it to require 60 per cent less energy to pull than a traditional golf trolley.

The spring system controls the acceleration and deceleration of the trolley, reducing the physical effort of the person pulling it: the internal spring system absorbs most of the erratic movements, reducing strains on a player's joints, and the external spring allows the trolley to pivot to adjust to undulating fairways without the handle moving.

The life of a golf equipment inventor isn't an easy one. Walsh, who runs a number of electroplating companies, looks back on the past six years and, hand on heart, admits that his obsession with the trolley dominated this period of his life. He spent £200,000 of his own money in developing it - including £60,000 for patents in Europe, North America, Australia and Japan (he now holds a 20-year worldwide patent) - and, on many occasions, the boardroom of his Santry electroplating factory was covered wall-to-wall with designs and bits and pieces to be used in the trolley's development.

"Once I start something, I put blinkers on and just can't stop," said Walsh, who plays his club golf out of Royal Tara. A 12handicapper, he confesses that working on his personal project has "ruined my game", adding: "Any time I did go out to play, I found myself looking at my playing partner's trolley, assessing how he was using it and at ways that I could improve it."

It has been a long, hard road to getting the finished product into golf shops. In effect, only somebody with complete faith in his creation could see it through. And Walsh, a native of Bray but now living in Malahide, couldn't afford not to have that sort of self-belief.

"Originally, my idea was to develop a hands-free trolley, perhaps one that could be clipped to a belt so that you could mark cards while walking to the teebox," recalled Walsh. However, he encountered a number of problems - especially with balance and also discovered that the trolley would hit off the golfer when he stopped moving - which convinced him it wasn't worth pursuing.

Instead, he switched the process towards developing the unique spring/air damper attachment. Initially, his idea was to develop this as a "handle" that could be attached to existing trolleys. There was an element of secrecy to the whole operation. Only close family members were aware of his idea and he carried out all the early manufacturing work himself. Once a prototype was developed, he took to testing it on golf courses at night so that it wouldn't be seen.

Over a year after the concept first found a place in his mind, Walsh had developed a prototype to such a stage that he received preliminary patents in Ireland and England and was free to show it to potential distributors. The feed-back at this stage was positive, but many felt he should attempt to develop it as an entire Air Glide trolley, not just as a handle.

It took until early 1997 before he redesigned the spring and damper system as part of a trolley and, at this juncture, he brought in Dave Curran, an engineer whom he had previously worked with in his electroplating business, to concentrate on redesigning the housing within the trolley while he got on with the task of developing various springs.

One of the most time-consuming phases was in developing a pivot system which enabled the handle to flex up and down during use. Although it works well in the rough, the internal reverse spring also allows the golfer to lock the handle rigid, as with a normal trolley, should he find himself in extremely rough terrain. Tests conducted by the Dublin City University Physics Department found that the Air Glide was 60 per cent easier to pull than a traditional trolley.

By 1998, Walsh was in a position to show his product to potential distributors. Late that year, the trolley's inventor had some luck in his search for an international outlet. Dave Fahy, of Tretorn Ireland, introduced Walsh to James Lilly Wu, the marketing manager of Taiwan-based Sports World Enterprises who have been involved in manufacturing and distributing golf equipment for 15 years.

"From the start, I had wanted to manufacture the Air Glide in Ireland," said Walsh. Research and further investigation showed that it wasn't commercially feasible to do so, however. The result is that the product, although designed and conceived in this country, is being manufactured in Taiwan and is now being sold in the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, Europe and Ireland. Each country has its own distribution agent - Tretorn Spalding have the distribution rights in Ireland - and Walsh is heading into his first Christmas market finally at ease with the product.

When it was first released, a small manufacturing fault - "a bad weld," he explained - resulted in a problem with the trolley's wheel. It was rectified almost immediately and, now, Walsh professes to being "extremely happy with the finished article. It's almost like power steering in a car, you don't appreciate it until you go back to a car without it. It is the same with this trolley," he said.

Having devoted so much time, money and effort to the project - "I've put six years of my life into it," he said - the final product is now in shops retailing at circa £80.