The Golf Ball Throughout History
The golf ball is a strange little ball, it is full of little bumps or dimples unlike other balls. You would expect a golf ball to be smooth more like a ping-pong ball only heavier right? Did the golf ball start out this way? Or are we looking at a slow process of evolution?
Over the years and throughout the history of golf there have been many a golf ball introduced to the game. The very first golf ball was the featherie. This was a leather pouch that was filled with feathers. It has to be filled with wet feathers and the leather was also soaked as well. This was all stitched inside out and then soaked in oil and dried and this left it a hard ball. This type of golf ball was then painted white and used on the golf course. It was not the most effective ball as it was only goof until it got wet, once that happened this golf ball was out of commission.
The next popular form of golf ball was the gutta-percha golf ball. This was a golf ball made from the gum of a Malaysian tree. The golf ball maker would take some of this Malaysian Sapodilla tree gun and mold it with heat into a ball like shape. This was a golf ball with smooth sides and it surprisingly enough did not even go as far as the featherie did and the featherie only went 150-175 yards a shot. So this golf ball was not the best one ever produced to say the least. But at this golf ball aged one professor noticed that it did better. It was the markings on the golf ball as it was used that was allowing it to travel further.
This is how the golf ball came to have the simples that it does today. Different people experimented with the best types of outer surfaces on a golf ball until this way was agreed to be the most efficient. A golf ball has a strange construction throughout however, the oddity of the golf ball does not only live skin deep. The inside of a golf ball consists of a rubber ball, a small one that is then wrapped over and over thousands of times with rubber thread. It is this thread of the golf ball that is then coated with the enameling, the enameling with dimples that gives the golf ball its recognizable finish.