History of the Golf Ball

The Featherie

In the early 1600’s a new ball, made primarily of feathers and known as the featherie, was introduced. This was a hand made ball, made from a hatfull of goose feathers, tightly packed into a leather, ball shaped, outer cover approximately 1.5” diameter. The cover was made of several pieces of leather stitched together and both the feathers and outer cover were assembled while wet. During the drying process the leather cover retracted and the feathers expanded to form a hardened ball. The ball was then usually finished off by painting. The featherie was extremely functional, were not as hard, flew much further and were a massive improvement over the wooden balls used previously. However, the featherie was practically uselesss when it became wet.

The Gutta-Percha or "Guttie"

As the balls were produced entirely by hand the cost of the balls were well out of reach of the general population and the game of golf became a reserve of the privileged. History of the golf ball indicates that the introduction of the gutta-percha ball, or guttie, around 1848 directly contributed to the expansion of the game of golf.

Gutta-percha is a rubber like substance from tropical trees found in Malaya and other areas of South East Asia. The substance, collected from the felled trees coagulates, on exposure to air, from its liquid form into a solid mass. Hot water softens the solid form, which facilitates manipulation into the required shape. The first solid gutta-percha balls were shaped by hand kneading the heated material into a ball. The development of metal moulds followed with the result that ball makers could manufacture 50 – 100 balls each day, far in excess of the output of the feather ball maker. Mass production of the gutta-percha balls caused the price of the balls to drop rapidly to a cost that more and more golfers could afford. This meant that many new players, previously excluded because of cost restraints, were introduced to the game of golf.

The Hammered Ball

Smooth balls were produced initially but soon players noticed that roughening of the surface, encountered during normal play, caused the ball to fly straighter and further. The ball makers experimented with surface patterns, initially by altering the surface with the claw end of a hammer thus producing hand hammered balls. Soon, the golf ball makers began altering the moulds to enable patterns to be added during manufacture of the ball.

The Bramble

Dozens of pattern designs were developed, generally each ball maker devised his own unique pattern. One popular design to emerge was a design called the bramble pattern. This featured a closely packed pattern of bumps like the surface of a raspberry. The bramble features prominently in most publications discussing the history of the golf ball.

The weight of gutta-percha golf balls ranged from around 1.40 to 1.70 ounces and the average driving distance for a player using a gutta-percha ball was about 180 yards, around 20 yards further than when using a featherie.

Gutta-percha balls were rock hard, a total contrast to the earlier featherie ball. The hardness of the balls meant that they were not easily cut by iron clubs but wooden clubs could not withstand constant hits of the hard gutta-percha balls. This brought about a change to the head shape of wooden clubs, from a thin neck and shallow face, to a thicker neck and deeper face.

In very cold weather gutta-percha balls were prone to becoming brittle, which resulted in a tendency for the balls to break up. Conversely, in hot weather a gutta-percha ball could become soft which resulted in a shorter ball flight.

Despite these physical limitations due to weather extremes and the tendency to damage wooden clubs the popularity of the gutta-percha ball never diminished and remained as the standard ball for golfers until well in to the twentieth century.

The Dimpled Ball

The rubber-cored ball, an invention from an American, Coburn Haskell, an employee of the Goodrich Tyre and Rubber Company. Ohio, burst on to the golfing scene in 1901. Elastic thread was wound around a rubber core and then wrapped in a patterned outer cover of gutta-percha. The new ball made its mark when Sandy Herd, the winner of The Open Championship at Royal Liverpool in 1902, used a Haskell ball on all four rounds.

History of the golf ball shows that the modern ball originated when William Taylor applied a dimple pattern to a Haskell ball in 1905. Golf ball dimples were found to maximise lift while at the same time minimising drag. This was produced in a form opposite to the previously used bramble, which featured raised bumps on its outer cover, by applying indented dimples into the outer surface.

Manufacturers continued to experiment with golf ball design but it was not until 1921 that the Royal & Ancient and USGA standardised the size and weight of the ball.They agreed that the ball should weigh no more than 1.62 ounces and have a diameter of not less than 1.62 inches. However, from 1931 the USGA introduced a ball having a minimum size of 1.68 inches and a maximum weight of 1.55 ounces. The weight was raised to 1.62 ounces a year later. Since then this USGA standard has also been adopted elsewhere. The Professional Golfer's Association in Great Britain announced in 1968 that it was to experiment with the bigger ball of 1.68 inches in its tournaments and inn 1974, the Royal & Ancient made the larger ball compulsory for the Open Championship. Following rule revisions, the smaller sized ball became redundant in 1988.

Modern Golf Ball

Today the original gutta-percha cover of the Haskell ball has been replaced by newer materials. Balata replaced gutta-percha in balls for the professionals and surlyn took over in balls used by the majority of amateur golfers. The balata covered ball is usually a three-piece ball comprising a centre core wound with rubber and covered with balata. Several substances have been used for the centre core, including corn syrup, salt water, honey and dry ice. The surlyn covered ball is typically a two-piece ball comprising of a solid core with the surlyn cover. Surlyn is a man made substance invented in 1968 which is much harder wearing than balata and helps eliminate cuts in the cover.

More recently, multilayer, non-wound balls covered with surlyn or urethane and titanium cores have all been developed. In this current phase of the history of the golf ball the rubber wound ball, so prominent for a hundred years, is practically extinct.

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