The Golf Ball: How It Ended Up Being What It Is Today

During the earliest days of golf on the eastern coast of Scotland, most players used ancient apparatus to play the game in a more awkward and informal way. Here, the first clubs as well as golf balls are made up of wood.

It was on 1618 that the feather golf ball was finally released. This was commonly called the "Featherie". This feather golf ball was a handcrafted ball made with goose feathers securely pressed into a horse or cowhide sphere. This is getting done while the ball was still soaked. After drying, the leather shrank and the feathers expanded creating a hardened ball.

But because these types of golf balls are specially hand made, they usually cost higher than the clubs. In doing so, only a few privileged people could afford to play golf during those days.

Then came the Guttie golf ball. This prehistoric type of golf ball was made from the rubber like sap of the Gutta tree that can be located in the tropics. With its rubber characteristics, guttie balls can be cheaply reproduced and can be easily repaired by reheating and reshaping.

However, among the two earliest types of golf balls, the feather golf ball was said to travel even further than the gutties. This is due to the smooth exterior of the gutties that restricts the capacity of the golf ball to cover more distance.

With this new scientific analysis, the developers of golf ball finally came up with balls with the "dimples" that are predominant in modern golf balls these days.

Dimples are built into golf balls so as to lessen the aerodynamic drag, which will be acting on the ball if it were totally flat. This is because flat balls, when sailing through the air; leave a huge pocket of low-pressure air in its stir therefore creating a drag.

Having dimples on golf balls, the pressure differential decreases and the drag force is lessened. These dimples create turbulence in the air around the golf ball. This, consequently, forces the air to clasp the golf ball more closely. By doing so, the air trails the warp created by the ball towards the back instead of flowing past it. This results to a smaller wake and reduced drag.

Dimples also aid players to put in a backspin on a shot making the golf ball break off on the putting green.

The concept of putting dimples on golf balls can be traced back in the course of the gutta percha phase. Coburn Haskell introduced the one-piece rubber cored ball encased in a gutta percha sphere. It was during this time when the players observed how their shots became a lot more predictable as their balls turned rough from play.

When William Taylor used the dimple pattern to a Haskell ball in 1905, golf balls at last took their modern form.

After that, dimpled golf balls were officially employed in every golf tournament. In 1921, the golf balls took its form with standard size and weight.

Today, there is an abundant selection of golf balls to match different golf game and also condition. There are golf balls that give control, while some offer distance. In regardless of what ways golf balls differ, only one thing is common and known. Golf balls are not just elements of the sports arena; they are more than ever a paradigm of a concept in physics.

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