The Evoluton of the Golf Ball

A very wooden affair
Golf clubs and balls were originally made from wood back in the 16th century. Having to use wooden balls resulted in the golfer's swing not being very accurate.

The Featherie
The sport of golf was to see a marked improvement in golf ball construction in 1618, with the introduction of the Featherie. Instead of wood, these new balls were made up of an animal hide shell stuffed with goose feathers. The hide was either made from cow hide or horse hide. In order to shape this into a ball, it was soaked in water. The drying process would then result in a hardened ball, which was painted once fully dry. The ball's crafter would place their mark on the finished ball.

Anyone for rubber, Vicar
1848 brought the introduction of rubber as a suitable material for the construction of golf balls. It was Rev. Adam Paterson of St. Andrews in Scotland, who took the sap of the Gutta-percha tree and fashioned it into golf balls. The ball itself was to be known by the name of the tree, the Gutta Percha. The tree itself is found in the tropics of northern Australasia and south eastern Asia.

Now that the golf balls were made from rubber, meant that if damaged they could easily be repaired, just by reheating then remoulding them. Up until 1880 the Gutta Percha golf ball had smooth surface, which prevented it from travelling any great distance, and in fact not even as far as the Featherie golf ball.

Industrialisation and the end of the hand crafted ball
Mass production of the Gutta Percha golf ball came into being thanks to the industrial age of the late 19th century. This resulted in cheap golf balls for the public, but also meant the demise of the hand crafted golf ball.

The one-piece rubber core
Another multi part golf ball came on to the scene in 1898, this time making use of the Gutta-percha rubber. This time the Gutta-percha was used to for the outer casing of the ball, and a solid rubber core with a threaded rubber covering was placed within. A serious issue with this was that the threaded rubber covering could only be made by hand, and it was not until a thread winding machine was built by W. Millson that the ball could finally be put into mass production.

The golf ball as we know it today
The golf ball's drag was reduced and lift maximised when William Tyler included a dimpled surface to the Haskell golf ball design in 1906.

The golf ball went BANG – exploding balls
A joke these were not. In 1906 a designer for some reason thought that to put compressed air into a golf ball in place of the solid rubber core would be a good idea. They had not considered the reaction of the compressed air when the ball heated up. As a result the golf courses featured for a while, the sight of the occasional well used ball, blowing up in the golfer's face.

The standardisation of the golf ball
Set standards to restrict the weight and size of golf balls did not exist until the two main organisations, USGA and R&A, came up with their own set in 1921. These standards differed between the two organisations up until 1990. The Unites States Golf Association (USGA) was from North America, and the Royal & Ancient Club of St. Andrew (R&A) came from Scotland in the United Kingdom.