The History Of The Golf Ballby Matthew Roberts The golf ball has changed so much over the history of the game that many people dont realize how far it has really come. With modern day balls being scientifically manufactured with specific behaviors, it really wasnt all that long ago that the standard ball still consisted of a shell of tree sap. So lets take a look back at the history of the golf ball: The earliest days of golf (up until the 16th century) involved using simple clubs and balls carved out of wood. The balls would often vary in size and weight. Then in 1618 the Featherie was introduced to the game. This was basically a hand-crafted ball of compressed goose feathers encased in cow hide. When the ball dried, the feathers would expand and the cow hide would shrink... creating a very hard ball. However, as these balls were hand-crafted, few people of that time could afford them. Over 200 years later in 1848 the Guttie was introduced. This ball was made from the sap of the tropical Gutta tree. The sap could be easily molded into a sphere when heated, and turned rock hard when cold. Golfers soon noticed that as the smooth surface of the Guttie became scratched and chipped the ball actually flew further. So it was in the late 1800s that the Guttie was manufactured deliberately with patterns on the surface. This was also the time that the mass production of golf balls began, and soon the hand-crafted Featheries were phased out. Around 1900 a man named Coburn Haskell produced the first one-piece rubber core golf ball. A solid rubber core was wrapped inside a layer of Gutta sap to produce the most effective ball of its time. These balls were soon universally accepted as they gave golfers an average of 20 yards extra distance. It wasnt untill 1972 that Haskells design was improved, when Spalding introduced the first two-piece ball. However, there were many other types of golf balls experimented with before the two-piece ball came about. Different cores of mercury, metal and cork all proved to be ineffective. One of the most interesting designs was that of a pneumatic golf ball... where the compressed air in the core often expanded with heat, causing the ball to frequently explode. These days the manufacturing of golf balls really is a science. Wind chambers that simulate the flight of the balls help produce golf balls designed for all different things... from giving you more distance and accuracy, to allowing for more feel and spin around the greens. But as you can see from this article, things have come a long way in a short time... it really wasnt all that long ago that people were still using the old one piece rubber balls and even Gutties.
|
© 2007 RuzzMan LLC