The Golf Ball

Looking to purchase golf balls that 
comply with the rules of golf ?

Golf balls, the most unique piece of sports equipment, are you nuts? 

Maybe, but let's take a look. Is there anything unique about the way they are manufactured ?  Millions of golf balls are produced with ultra precision, going through a testing procedure established by the games governing bodies, the United States Golf Association  and the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St, Andrews. 

To achieve these exacting standards, millions of dollars and years of time of been invested to insure compliance with their golf ball requirements. 

Nah, there is nothing unique about this, even the briefest of studies shows that the equipment used in other sports go through similar manufacturing and testing procedures.

Well then is it the way they are sold ? Three to a sleeve ? No, Tennis balls are sold 3 to a sleeve. (Someday we'll ask our club's master ball hawk why golf balls are sold in sleeves of three, his answer maybe quite interesting.)

How about the size of golf balls, does that make them unique ? 

True, they are a specific size and that size is different from the size of the balls used in other sports, but size specifications apply to all sports balls so can we say this is why they are unique,? Nah ! 

Then let's consider the material they are made from. Today's high tech golf balls are being made from some pretty far out materials that is for sure, but at one time they were made like a baseball or football with leather covers, and they were still the most unique of all sports equipment. So nope, that's not it either.

To find out what makes a golf ball unique we're going to have to propel ourselves back, back like a wild drive hitting the red tee marker. Back over 600 years when golf balls were rocks being hit by golfing sticks.

Picture yourself walking along the moors and dunes. You and your golfing partners whacking away at your rocks with your wooden golfing sticks when the inevitable happens. You take a mighty swing at your golfing rock and your stick breaks.. "Ya lousy bastard, ya broke my golfing stick!" You know that if you keep pounding rocks with your stick, your stick will eventually break but you're hooked so you keep whacking away. Prior to 1400 this had to be a concern to most golfers, as surely good golfing sticks had to be hard to come by.

It also brought about the advent of the golf ball hawk.

Also with the feathery, it probably was the first time the game was questioned as a man’s sport. How many real men do you know  would go running around a field, wearing kilts playing with their feather balls?

One of the advantages of the feathery was that it would almost always hold it’s shape, (although the shape was not always round), it was durable, and livelier than other golf balls of the past. It introduced distance to the game as a feathery golf ball could fly in excess of 250 yards. 

Naturally this lead to the massive over swing and such phrases as "You little bugger; I'm going to knock the stuffing out of ya !"

How do you think today's distance golf balls might compare ?

By now the game of golf was becoming known to many as "The Devil's Game" and who could blame them. The profit in golf balls was turning caddies into to petty thieves, and it was sending other men of all ages to running around the moors and dunes whacking and slashing at their balls, one minute cheering and laughing wildly the next having explosive fits of anger. All this climaxing with heavy drinking and carousing at the "19th Hole". (Sounds to me like the Adventures of Dr. Double, Golf Psychiatrist and amicable Mr. Par)

Clearly something had to done, and it was, by the golf mad Reverend James Patterson of Dundee who while doing missionary work in Malaysia discovered the gutta percha ,which is a rubber like material that comes from the dried sap of sapodilla trees of East Asia. 

The good Reverend found that Gutta percha could be molded into golf balls. The ability to mold golf balls made them not only considerably less expensive to make, but they could made with different surface patterns thus the introduction of "high tech" to golf ball manufacturing. 

The economic impact on the golf industry was quite significant with hundreds of feathery makers losing their employment and the caddy/ball hawks seeing their income plummet. 

A Feathery Golf Ball

A Hand Hammered Gutty Golf Ball

Machine-marked Gutty Golf Ball

Then at long last the Holy Grail, the MODERN GOLF BALL, A hexa-quad poly-dimpled, rubber-covered, high-compression, laser formed technological marvel with a weight of 1.62 ounces and a diameter of 1.68 inches that even when struck by an average golfer is capable of going from 0 to 100 mph in a heart beat.

That little white piece of agony provoking scrounge, looking at you sneering "hit me with your best shot", and when you do it just sits where it lands and waits for more and more. "I'm gonna to smash the crap out off ya" the angry golfer blurts and with a mighty blow of his most powerful golfing weapon sends his helpless antagonist hurdling thru space. Then upon hunting him down, grins and says "take that you little b------", once again sending one flying toward damnation. 

So, have you figured it out yet ? Golfers think golf balls can hear! Not only do they think they can hear, but they get upset if the golf ball doesn’t do what they are told to do! For example, golf balls can’t run and they have no legs, and the only thing that stops them is the law of gravity.

Get up, Sit down, Turn, Bend, Get out of there, Run, Hit something hard, Kick left, Kick right, Bite,@#@!&**^%$@!

Versions of these expressions are heard around the world, from the jungle courses of S. Africa to the resort golf courses of Myrtle Beach, from sand "green" courses of Alberta Canada to the blush tropical courses of Fiji and the dessert courses of the middle east. And of course on the PGA Tour.

Don't believe it , why not take a little golfing vacation and see for yourself ?

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Of if you would prefer you can send a golf ball history time line.