Golf Balls; A History

Much like the sport itself, the golf ball has undergone quite the changes since the game came into being some 500 plus years ago.  From the beginning years when the balls were fashioned out of smoothed wood, to the more modern approach to the ball which sees state of the art plastics and an interior constructed for perfect accuracy and trajectory, the golf ball is truly a curious specimen.

In 1618, some of the first improvements began to be implemented to the golf ball.  At the time, most who played the sport where using balls made from wood, but all of that was about to change.  Instead of wood, leather began to make an appearance on courses using only cow hide and a small mass of feathers.  These feathers would be gathered and then carefully wrapped in the hide.  But as it stood like this, the ball was not hard enough and would often careen into unintended directions.  To remedy this, the ball was soaked for some time in water in order to make the feathers inside expand and the leather harden.

This style of ball enjoyed a lot of popularity for almost 200 years.  It wasn't until 1849 that the next innovation was made.  Reverend Adam Paterson of St. Andrews had an idea.  He wanted to see the ball have a more natural way of traveling through the air.  He began to look at some of the resources that he had around him.  One such resource was the sap from the gutta tree which had been brought back from an expedition to the tropics.  Using he rubber like material from the tree and the sap, Paterson heated the two together to create a pretty stable polymer.  After it was heated properly, it could be molded and shaped however you pleased.

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Thirty years later, after the Gutta ball had some time to increase in popularity, patterns started to show up on the outside of it.  These patterns were implemented in order to improve the distance that the ball was capable of traveling.  The most popular out of all these new patterns was referred to as the "bramble" pattern.  The pattern saw the Gutta ball be made with dimples and dips around the perimeter.

A  manufacturer by the name of Dunlop saw the popularity of this style of Gutta ball and sought to mass produce them to a larger audience of consumers.  In time, his production company completely eradicated all "homemade" golf balls of the earlier years.

Just at the turn of the century an even greater innovation was approaching the golf ball.  Coburn Haskell wanted to pose a challenge to Dunlop's brand.  Instead of a thick ball as before, he wanted to create a new rubber-cored ball that would really make improvements to the ball's lift and reduce the amount of drag that a golfer would have after a swing.

In 1921, the golf ball became standardized due to the emerging trend in competitions and tours that were springing up around the United States.  Today's golf ball weighs no more than 1.62 ounces and a has a diameter of 1.68 mm.