The Evolution of the Golf Ball

Posted on April 29, 2018

The modern golf ball has undergone a few transformations to get to where it is today. The origins of the golf ball can be traced to five distinct stages of evolution. From a wooden ball in the 14th century to the modern rubber core balls, discover the history behind the golf ball.

Wooden Golf Balls

By many accounts it is presumed that the earliest games of golf were played with a wooden ball in the 14th century. It’s been refuted that wooden balls were never used in links golf in Scotland, but instead they were used in early games that were similar to golf. The evidence of the use of wooden golf balls is scarce, hence the debate around whether they were used by golfers.

Hairy Golf Balls

From 1486 through 1618, the Scottish received and used the hairy golf ball imported from the Netherlands. The hairy golf ball was a hand-sewn round leather ball filled with cows’ hair or straw. In 1554 the hairy golf ball was being produced in Scotland by the “cordiners and gouff ball makers of North Leith.” These balls continued to be used even after the introduction of the featherie golf ball in 1618 because they were less expensive, thus becoming known as the ‘common’ ball. They were used up until the early 18th century.

Featherie Golf Balls

In 1618 the ‘Featherie’ golf ball was introduced, which was made similar to the hairy golf balls but with goose or chicken feathers. Since the featherie golf ball was filled with feathers it was able to be stuffed more full than the hairy, making it harder thus able to fly farther. To make a featherie, the feathers and leather would be shaped while wet. Upon drying the leather shrank and feathers expanded creating the desired hardness for the ball. Once dried the featherie would be painted and the ball-maker would add their mark. This process of making a featherie was very time consuming which made them more costly. A few draw backs to the featherie was that it was hard to get perfectly round, it lost distance if it got wet, and would potentially split open upon impact.

Golf’s first professional, Allan Robertson, was considered the premier ball and club maker of his time, in the early 1800s. In 1835, at age 14, Tom Morris (later known as Old Tom Morris & the Grandfather of Golf) began working under Robertson at St. Andrews. The two worked together making featherie golf balls until the advent of the guttie ball. Robertson didn’t like the guttie and saw it as a threat to his business. Morris saw the guttie ball as the future of the game. The two parted ways after Robertson fired Morris for playing with a guttie. Morris went and opened his own shop in Prestwick, which became the site of the first Open Championship.

Guttie/Gutta Golf Balls

In 1848 Dr. Robert Adams Paterson invented the Gutta-Percha ball, or Guttie. The guttie was made by using dried sap from the Malaysian Sapodilla tree. The sap had a rubber-like quality to it and upon heating could be formed into a sphere. The gutties soon gained popularity as they were less expensive to make, were easily reformed if damaged and had better aerodynamic properties than the featherie. The guttie evolved further when it was discovered that the marks left on the ball after hitting the guttie with the club actually made the guttie more aerodynamic.

Moving away from the original smooth surface makers of gutties began intentionally indenting the surface of the balls to achieve a better and more consistent flight pattern. By 1890 gutties were being produced with molds which made their quality consistent and increased their affordability. One of the commonly used patterns on the guttie was known as the bramble, which were raised spherical bumps along the surface that made it resembled bramble fruit.

Rubber Core Golf Balls – Haskel

In 1898 Coburn Haskell made a discovery while awaiting Bertram Work, of the B.F. Goodrich Company, when he wound a rubber thread into a ball and bounced it. Haskell discovered it had a lot of bounce and upon Bertram Work’s suggestion to put a cover over it, the rubber Haskell golf ball was born. The early process of making the rubber Haskell golf ball involved a liquid-filled or solid round core which was wound with a layer of rubber thread to create a larger round inner core which was then covered by a thin outer shell made of balata sap.

Initially the Haskel golf balls were made with the bramble patterns like the guttie balls. However in the early 1900s it was discovered that inverting the dimples to go inward and concave gave the ball a better flight pattern which was easier to control. Thus bringing the modern look of the golf ball that we’ve become accustom to.

The balata sap initially used to make Haskel golf balls had a tendency to get indents on it as it was relatively soft. In the mid-1960s there was a new synthetic resin called Surlyn that was introduced along with new urethane blends that were used for golf ball covers. These new materials provided a more durable cover that was less apt to club indents. Golf balls began to be classified by how many components are used in layering and constructing the golf ball, either two-piece, three-piece or four-piece balls. In 1967, Spalding became the first company to patent and develop the solid golf ball by Jim Bartsch, which eliminated the layered technique and became known as the ‘executive’ model.

The rubber Haskel golf ball is the standard for the modern golf ball. The layering techniques allow for golf ball manufacturers to create golf balls with different properties that help with different areas of your game. Some balls can fly farther while some are designed to generate more spin. However some basic aspects must remain as the Rules of Golf, governed by the Royal & Ancient and the United States Golf Association, have set standards that the diameter of a ‘conforming’ golf ball cannot be smaller than 1.680 inches and the weight cannot exceed 1.620 ounces. The ball must also adhere to having spherical symmetry.

Categories: Golf History