If you’re playing golf on Labor Day, you might think of race-car legend Carroll Shelby when you shank a ball into a water hazard.

Shelby — who was a dedicated member of LA’s exclusive Bel Air Country Club — invented other gizmos besides hot rods, and apparently spent much of his time on the links trying to concoct the perfect device for retrieving golf balls from the drink.

“I saw Carroll every day,” the late driver’s pal, Dr. Phil, told us. “We were really good friends. You know, he was Texan . . . I’m from Texas, and we were both members of the same club where we played golf. I met him there close to 20 years ago. He was a fun guy.”

The talk-show star added of his pal, “He was such an inventor! The most valuable club in my bag is the ‘ball getter’ . . . he was constantly inventing these retrievers that could go 25 yards out into these ponds.” Phil added that “he did that more than he played golf.”

In addition to creating cars, Shelby was known as an eccentric entrepreneur. He started the first-ever chili cook-off in Texas, and then provided the seed money for restaurant chain Chili’s in the ’70s. He held court at lunch at the starry Bel Air golf club — and even tried to patch up his seventh marriage and move back into his marital Bel Air home because he missed his club pals, his son Pat said.

An Automotive News reporter said in 2011: “Carroll once took me to lunch at the Bel Air Country Club. Very posh, but what impressed me was actor James Garner walking over to greet Carroll, who introduced me. ‘Now Jim, he’s a reporter, but not a Hollywood type. He writes cars.’ ”

Dr. Phil, who turned 70 last week, recalled Shelby telling him, “Every day you’re upright and on the right side of the grass” is a good day. “He had a good attitude,” Phil said. “He’d come [to the club] in the these Shelby GTs. He’d say, ‘Get in, doc!’ I’d get in and holy s - - t! He’d forgotten he was 78.”

Shelby, who was portrayed by Matt Damon in last year’s “Ford v Ferrari,” died in 2012 at 89.