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The cameraThe Evolution of Golf Balls
The evolution of golf balls has affected the development of golf balls, the golf course, and the rules of the game.
The “Wooden”
The very first golf balls used from the mid fifteenth century until the seventeenth century were made from wood. They were most likely made from hardwoods such as beech or boxroot. Very little is known about these balls, except their “negligible aerodynamic properties”.
A Wooden Ball
The “Feathery” or “Featherie” (~1600)
In 1618, a new leather-covered ball stuffed with goose or chicken feathers was created. A ballmaker would stitch three pieces of cowhide together (two disks and a rectangular strip), leaving a small opening to stuff feathers in. The feathers, enough to fill a gentleman’s top hat, were first boiled to soften them up. After the ball was sewn closed and left to dry, it became tighter and firmer, with a weight and size similar to the modern ball used today. Finally, it was painted with several coats of white paint to make the ball easier to find when in play. The benefit of the featheries came in their superior play. While a wooden ball was typically limited to distances of 100 yards, more than twice the distance could be easily achieved with a feathery. Additionally, the leather stitching acted in a similar manner to dimples on a modern ball – adding lift and decreasing drag, thereby creating better flight for the ball. Unfortunately, featheries also had a tendency to split and become too damp in wet weather, so that an average player used four balls per round. The ball-making process for featheries was very difficult, so that even the best ballmakers could only make three a day. As a result, featheries cost twelve times as much as wooden balls, making it equivalent to the price of a wooden club. Thus, the less wealthy continued to use wooden balls, while featheries were used primarily by the richer players.
Making Featheries
The “Gutta-Percha” (~1850)
Gutta-Percha refers to the sap of the Sapodilla tree typically found in Malaysia. Although normally hard, it becomes soft and malleable when boiled in water, becoming hard again when cooled. In 1848, Reverend Dr. Robert Adams Paterson handmade the first Gutta ball by rolling the softened material into a ball. The Gutta ball had the advantages of being more durable than the feathery, resistant to water, and provided increased run. However, its most important advantage was that it was easier to make than the feathery, and was thus priced at only a quarter of what a feathery would cost. This in turn, made the game of golf more accessible, catching the attention of Britain’s everyday man and helping to popularize the sport. One disadvantage of the Gutta was that it had a tendency to split in mid-flight. As a result, the official golf rules had to be modified to allow a golfer to replay a new ball from the spot where the largest remaining fragment of the ball had landed.
A Gutta-Percha Ball
The “Hand hammered Gutta” (~1870)
The typical usage pattern of gutta-percha balls involved boiling and rolling them on a smoothing board after a round of golf to remove imperfections resulting from play. However, by chance it was discovered by some golfers who either forgot or were too lazy to smooth their gutta balls that these balls tended to fly truer than perfectly smooth gutta balls. This knowledge was utilized to create the hand hammered gutta, which involved hammering a softened gutta ball to create an evenly dented pattern that greatly improved the ball’s play. Eventually, these indentations were no longer created by hand, but rather using iron molds or ball presses.
A Hand Hammered Gutta Ball
The “Bramble” (~1890)
During this period, there were a great variety of patterns and surface textures created on gutta balls, ranging from those simulating the stitching on a feathery to those with perfectly even symmetry along the entire ball. The most popular design consisted of closely packed outwardly protruding bumps, similar to the surface of a blackberry or raspberry.
A Bramble Pattern Ball
The “Rubber Ball” (~1900)
In 1898, Coburn Haskell accidentally discovered what would soon become the rubber ball by winding rubber bands into a ball at his friend’s rubber factory. The ball’s immediate sense of “liveliness” sparked his interest, and led him to eventually create a ball with a solid rubber core with high-tension rubber thread wrapped around it and covered with a gutta-percha cover. These balls were initially made by hand until 1900 when John Gammeter invented an automatic machine. The ability to economically mass-produce rubber balls has led some people to claim that “if one single invention revolutionized golf, it was Gammeter’s”. A few more changes still had to take place before the ball would become the one we know today. The gutta-percha cover was replaced with balata, a similar material also obtained from trees. More notably, in 1908 the bramble pattern was replaced with an inverted bramble pattern of “evenly distributed circular depressions covering the surface of the ball” – essentially the dimples on a golf ball.
A Rubber Ball
The “Modern Ball” (~1930)
The United States Golf Association established the standardization of the modern golf ball in terms of weight and size on January 1, 1932. A legal ball had a maximum weight of 1.62 ounces, and a maximum diameter of at least 1.68 inches. In later years, after testing equipment to measure velocity was developed, legal balls were constrained to a maximum velocity of 250 feet per second. These specifications and regulations reflect the incredible advancements made in manufacturing and the development of new and improved materials.
A Modern Ball
Purchasing Modern Golf Balls
Buying golf balls can be a very confusing process, especially with so many brands and multiple models for each brand. They all come with taglines such as “longer and slightly firm”, “incredible distance and soft feel”, “soaring distance and precision control”, “long and soft with extra spin”, to the point that every option seems desirable.
To further complicate matters, balls can be quite expensive, ranging from $0.50/ball when low-end balls are on sale, up to $4/ball for top name brands. That may not sound like much, but consider a single round of golf, which consists of 18 holes. It is very possible for a novice player to lose 15 balls in a single round of golf (I have done this myself on the Stanford Golf Course, and it is quite embarrassing to admit). This comes to an additional $7.50 - $60 per round of golf depending on the ball used. Of course, this number is skewed towards the extreme novice. Golf World estimates that more than 2.5 billion golf balls are lost per year, at an average of three to six per round.
On the whole, modern golf balls are typically split into two types: Balata and Surlyn, describing the type of covering used.
Balata balls are three-piece balls with an inner core that is wound with rubber and covered with balata, a resilient sap from South American balata trees. Balata is relatively soft, so that playing results in cuts and nicks in the ball. The advantages of a balata ball’s “softness” is its ability to allow a player to “shape” the path of the ball (slightly left or right to get around obstacles) and to create more backspin so that the ball stops rolling sooner after it hits the green. These manipulations require advanced techniques, and thus balata balls are typically utilized by more advanced players.
A Three-Piece Ball
Surlyn balls are two-piece balls with a solid core covered by surlyn, a man-made substance that is harder than balata and designed to resist cuts and nicks. Although these balls do not provide the softness or backspin of balata balls, they fly farther, are less expensive, and last longer. Typically, novice players use surlyn balls.
However, with advances in modern technology, these categories will also soon be obsolete, as surlyn balls can be designed to feel softer, and new man-made materials such as urethane can provide “all-around performance”.
