I am currently 59 years old. I will be 60 in about 3 months. The truth is I don’t feel anywhere near 60, most of the time. But in my almost 60 years of living I have seen a lot of changes in technology. In fact technology is increasing at an alarming rate. When I was a teenager we had a house phone with a rotary dial. I really thought we were getting up town when we got a house phone with push buttons. And then we got a long wire coil so we could stretch the receiver to the other room to talk on the phone. Cell phones were something you only saw on Star Trek. If you were away from home on a road trip or something and had a vehicle breakdown you had to find a Pay Telephone Booth to make a call, and then you better have some quarters and dimes in your pocket to make the call. Almost everyone kept a map or road atlas in their vehicle for directions. Who could have imagined back then that one day we would, not only have a portable telephone, but one that could tell us directions as well, and so much more. Phones have certainly evolved over just a few short years.
Have you ever thought about the Evolution of Golf Balls? Or even the Game of Golf? It is really quite interesting.
The Beginning
The golf ball actually has kind of mythical origin. The story is that the first golf ball was just a simple rounded stone that was hit by a shepherd who was bored. The shepherd hit the rounded stone with his crook. A crook is a long staff that resembles a walking cane. By pure luck the stone ended up in a hole in the ground, which encouraged the shepherd to repeat his success by trying to hit more stones in the hole. He found the newly invented game to be amusing and as he got better at it, he invited his friends to join him. And that is how golf was supposedly born. Unfortunately, there is no historical evidence for this story so we will probably never know who invented the game of golf and when it was invented.
However, there is a general agreement that golf originates from medieval Scotland, but a game involving the use of a stick and ball predates the Middle Ages for several centuries.
There are actually a number of countries that have claimed that golf or a golf-like game, was started in their particular country, and that may be so, however, modern golf was born in Scotland. By the middle of the 15th century it had become very popular.
The first golf ball
Information about the early history of golf balls is unfortunately very scarce. According to most authors who investigated the early history of golf balls, the first balls were probably made of wood, most likely beech, boxroot and similar hardwoods. We do know that the first record of a sold golf ball dates from 1452.
The first feather ball known as the featherie was introduced only in the early 17th century.
There was actually a lot of corporate fighting going on between the years 1567 and 1625, over exclusive rights to make golf balls. During the early “featherie era”, the best balls were made by the Dutch and their featheries were extremely popular in Scotland as well.
Until the mid-19th century, the featherie was the standard golf ball. It was made of cow or horsehide which was stuffed which was stuffed with feathers; most often goose feathers. The leather was soaked in water in order to be easier to work with. The feathers that were forced into the ball by using a specially designed crutch-handled filling rod were also soaked. After the ball was carefully hand sewn together, it was left to dry. While the leather shrank, the feathers expanded, which made the ball very hard and compact. The featherie also had excellent flight characteristics as it could reach a distance of up to 175 yards; although the longest recorded distance is more than 361 yards. Wow! It must be all them goose feathers still wanting to fly. But it also had a few weaknesses.
Despite its outstanding flight characteristics, the featherie was more or less useless when it got wet. There goes my game. Ball makers tried to fix this issue but had just limited success. Also, the featherie could easily be cut if hit with an iron club at an awkward angle. Another major problem with the feather ball was the fact that the manufacturing process was very time-consuming and costly. Even the best ball makers could only make a maximum of four featheries a day. This made them very expensive, even more expensive than golf cubs. Also, the repeated pressure against the chest and inhalation of the feathers made stuffing and stitching of feathers a rather dangerous craft, as most ball makers died at a young age.
Ball makers at these times spent a lot of time trying to make the ball as smooth as possible, thinking in there mind that this would make it fly further. But as it would later turn out, this had the opposite effect of what was intended.
Gutta Percha Ball (The Guttie)
In the mid 19th century, most people could only dream of playing golf. At that time there were fewer than 20 golf clubs around the world, with just three being outside of Scotland. But that was not the only thing that prevented most people from playing golf. The high cost of golf essentials. Especially golf balls, made the game pretty much inaccessible to most people. But that was soon to change.
The invention of the gutta-percha ball or the guttie, triggered a revolution. Gutta Percha is a tree. A thermoplastic latex is derived from the tree which is a polymer of isoprene which forms a rubber like elastomer. If you have had a root canal done then you have most likely had Gutta Percha put in the hole that was left. By the early 1860s the featherie, which was the standard for more than 300 years, practically became extinct due to cheaper production and consequently, lower cost, (up to 80% lower!), of the guttie. The guttie also had superior performance over the featherie.
The guttie sparked a revolution in golf by making the game more affordable.
Rubber-Wound Golf Ball
In 1899 an American businessman got a patent in the United States for the rubber-wound golf ball, which would soon lead to another revolution in golf. This ball has been widely regarded as the first modern golf ball. It was made of a solid rubber-wound core that was covered by guttapercha. The greatest thing that made it to become the next ball of choice was its performance; bringing control and feel to a whole new level. In addition, it was exceptionally forgiving to mishits and flew more than 20 yards further than the ball that was 100% gutta-percha. When ball makers adopted the Taylor dimple pattern in 1908, the rubber wound ball achieved even greater distances. All golf balls had the exact same dimple pattern known as the Atti Pattern until the early 1970s.
Conclusion
Everything mentioned above, only helped set the stage for a truly revolutionary golf ball that was introduced by Spalding in 1972, the two-piece Top-Flite which turned out to be the golf ball of the future. The Top Flite addressed every golfers dream, distance. Since then, just like cell phones, the ball makers continue to improve the golf ball. The golf ball and what we know about them is evolving right before our very eyes. So in conclusion, Don’t blink.
See you on the green,
Chris