Golf Ball Technology for Long Hitters
February 15, 2021
Like the clubs you play and the courses you play on, the golf ball has been evolving over the past six centuries. However, exactly what the first golf ball was made of is still debated by golf historians today. There does seem to be some consensus that playing a round in the 16th century Scotland would have required that you whack a wooden golf ball with a wooden-headed club. Nonetheless, others say the earliest references to golf suggest hitting smooth, round pebbles with wooden sticks, which can be traced back to the Romans. Historians do, however, seem to agree that hairy golf balls were first manufactured in The Netherlands as far back as the 1400s.
Leather Golf Balls with Hair or Feathers
Hand-sewn balls were crafted as leather outers and filled with cow’s hair or firmly packed straw. Scottish golf enthusiasts developed the “feathery” in 1618, which were expertly made from wet horse or cow hide and filled with soaked goose feathers. As the leather dried it shrank and the feathers expanded producing a hard, light ball that was often sealed with white paint. It is believed that most golfers continued to play the hairy ball because a feathery golf ball costs more than today’s most expensive balls. With a price tag of 2 to 5 shillings, golfers were paying the equivalent of $10 to $20 per for a feathery. This era of golf ball technology is believed to have slowed the development of metal clubs since wood clubs caused less damage to the ball’s surface and allowed it to maintain its shape for longer periods of play. Nonetheless, it took nearly two hundred years before there was a major technological advancement to feather or hair filled leather pouches.
Why Golf Balls Have Dimples
A major advancement in golf ball technology occurred in 1848 when a Scottish reverend named Robert Adams Paterson created the Gutty. Made from dried sap of the Malaysian sapodilla tree, the gutta-percha golf ball could be made spherical by heating and shaping it in a metal mold. Not only did the gutty have a rubbery feel, but the ball could also be reshaped if damaged or out-of-round. The gutty so revolutionized the game that rumors claim Old Tom Morris was fired from his job at St. Andrews (where featheries were made) after being caught playing with a gutty. A miss struck gutty led to an early epiphany of golf ball aerodynamics after a heavily nicked ball was observed to fly farther and straighter than a smooth ball. That was the beginning of metal presses being used to manufacture balls with consistent dimple patterns. Since these small bulges resembled the Brambleberry, golfers began calling the patterned ball “The Bramble”.
Twentieth Century Wound Golf Balls
While Coburn Haskell was waiting for the superintendent of B.F. Goodrich rubber company for a golf date in 1898, he picked up some rubber thread from the floor and began winding it into a ball. When Haskell bounced it on the plant floor, it rebounded to the ceiling. His discovery was called the Haskell golf ball, and the longer, straighter ball would soon replace both the Gutty and the Bramble. The sap of another tropical tree, the balata tree, released a material that could be molded into a soft cover that had excellent flight qualities, but the balata covered ball was easily nicked by any mishit. At the dawn of the twentieth century, golfers became fascinated by the improved length, trajectory, and spin when playing wound, balata-covered golf balls. Liquid core golf balls further advanced the technology of the golf ball making it easier to adapt to a player’s characteristics, but consumers quickly learned the caustic liquid could cause injuries if the ball exploded after a damaging blow.
Standardization of the Two-Piece Golf Ball
The wound, balata-covered golf ball was used well into the 20th century but was joined by a Surlyn covered ball introduced by DuPont in the mid-60s. The new synthetic resin began to replace the easily cut balata cover and new materials began to replace the traditional rubber-wound internal sphere. Many of these materials are still being used today to produce layered two-piece, three-piece, and four-piece golf balls. By the 1920s, the world’s major governing bodies, the Royal & Ancient (R&A) and the United States Golf Association (USGA) established specifications for diameter, weight, spherical integrity, and symmetry. However, in Scotland, a smaller diameter ball was used until a world standard was adopted in 1990. Today, there is no question golf ball technology has reached new heights. In fact, manufacturers like Callaway, Titleist, Pinnacle, Nike, and Volvik keep design technologies closely guarded in what has become a multi-million-dollar industry. Although it may appear that a golf ball is just a golf ball, fact is today’s ball incorporates numerous leading-edge technologies within the established specifications.