That little white orb

I asked a colleague of mine how did he perform in the big golf tournament over the weekend. He just gave me an ugly look and said, “It was so bad, I lost two in the ball washer.”

The ubiquitous golf ball. Its humble appearance belies the complicated manufacturing process behind it. Over time, it’s not only the professionals and the game that has undergone substantial modifications; even the golf ball has seen radical changes. The manufacturing process for golf balls has evolved as much, if not more, than the balls themselves.

The first clubs and balls were made of wood. In fact, the earliest documented reference to the game of golf dates to the year 1550, which talks about one John Daly playing with a wooden ball. It was in 1618 that the feather ball or ‘Featherie’ was introduced. Handcrafted, the ball was made with goose feathers, tightly packed into a horse or cowhide sphere. The feathers and the leather were given the shape of a ball when still wet. As the assembly dried out, the leather shrank and the feathers expanded to create a hardened ball. After this, the finishing was carried out by painting the ball. Notable ball-makers of the 1600s were Andrew Dickson, Leith and Henry Mills, St Andrews. The Scottish manufacturer, Allan Robertson, is reported to have made about 2,500 leather and feather balls in 1844.

The Gutta Percha ball or ‘Guttie’ introduced in 1848 by Reverend Adam Paterson was made from the rubber-like sap of the Gutta tree found in the tropics. When heated, the rubber could easily be moulded into a sphere and used as a golf ball. Not only was this economical to produce, it also had the advantage of being repaired by re-heating and re-shaping. Initially, Gutties possessed a smooth surface, which meant that they didn’t travel as far as the Featheries. It was in 1905 that the surface of the ball began to sport the dimpled pattern. Introduced by William Taylor to a Haskell ball, it gave the ball the shape and form that it continues to retain till this day. The dimple pattern maximised the lift while minimising the drag. Today, more than 150 years later, modern golf ball manufacturers produce nearly one billion balls annually (almost 2,000 per minute).

Natural and synthetic rubber compounds have long replaced the core of the ball that used to be made of feather; leather covers have now given way to thermoplastic resins; and geometrically sophisticated dimple patterns stretch the limits of performance. Today’s premium balls are typically multi-layered in construction. Thin, hard mantle and soft urethane cover surround their solid cores. Two-piece balls feature a solid core and firm shell often made of Surlyn, a less expensive but more shear-resistant material than the urethane covers of high-end balls. As such, multi-layer golf balls such as the Titleist Pro V1, Precept Tour Premium LS, Strata Tour Ultimate 2, Nike Tour Accuracy, Maxfli Revolution and Callaway HX offer the distance benefits of harder-feeling, lower-spinning two-piece balls off the tee while providing softer feel and more spin around the greens.

Aerodynamics and materials science have pushed the golf ball to its limits. Amongst all the other golf equipment, it’s the little white orb that has benefited the maximum from advancing technologies, radically changing the game of golf.