A Kingston University student has made a bicycle out of abandoned golf clubs to highlight how middle-aged men are swapping the fairway for the cycle lane.

Surrey Comet:

The clubs were bought for just 99p

Graphic design student Calum Ray, 22, bought the set of abandoned clubs from eBay for just 99p and turned them into a lightweight bicycle as his final project at the university.

He became convinced after visiting numerous troubled golf clubs that closures across the country could be put down to a rise in popularity in cycling.

Tempting offers have been since been put in for his unique creation, but Mr Ray is reluctant to depart with the one-off piece.

He said: “It’s so important to keep doing things that you’re genuinely passionate and excited about, it’s a breath of fresh air.

“I was really struck by the increase in cyclists on the road. At the same time I noticed a lot of golf clubs were closing and I wondered if there was a correlation.”

“The biggest challenge was that golf clubs are so thin and so light they are incredibly difficult to weld.”

Mr Ray, originally from Tring, in Hertfordshire, made the bicycle with the help of technicians at the university’s workshops after golf clubs kept snapping as he tried to make the structure.

The final product proved to be a “surprisingly sturdy, fully functional lightweight bicycle.”

Mr Ray added: “We found that the joints could be strengthened by double welding, you can file the join and grind it down so that it’s smooth again.

“Some elements, such as the golf club head pedals, revealed themselves as I was in the workshop. Initially I wanted the handlebars to be shaped using the golf club grip, but because the clubs are so thin, as soon as you started to bend it, they snapped.

“There was a lot of trial and error to figure out what could be done with the material. It was a very long process but we got there in the end.”

Mr Ray and his fellow coursemates have also won the D & AD Yellow Pencil award for a different design.