A Closer Look At The Golf Ball

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

It was on 1618 that the feather golf ball was finally introduced. This was commonly known as the "Featherie". This feather golf ball was a hand made ball made with goose feathers securely pressed straight into a horse or cowhide sphere. This is getting done while the ball is still wet. After drying, the leather shrank and the feathers expanded making a hardened ball.

But because these kinds of golf balls are specially handcrafted, they normally cost higher than the clubs. In doing so, only a few privileged people could manage to play golf during those days.

Next came the Guttie golf ball. This prehistoric kind of golf ball was made of the rubber like sap of the Gutta tree that can be found in the tropics. With its rubber nature, guttie balls can be inexpensively reproduced and can be easily repaired by reheating and reshaping.

But, among the two earliest forms of golf balls, the feather golf ball was said to travel farther than the gutties. This is because of the smooth surface of the gutties that limits the capacity of the golf ball to cover more range.

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

Dimples are crafted into golf balls so as to reduce the aerodynamic drag, that will be acting on the ball if it were totally smooth. This is because smooth balls, when sailing in the air; leave a huge pocket of low-pressure air in its stir therefore producing a drag.

Having dimples on golf balls, the pressure differential goes down and the drag force is reduced. These dimples produce turbulence in the air surrounding the golf ball. This, in turn, makes the air to clasp the golf ball more closely. By doing so, the air trails the warp created by the ball towards the back rather than flowing past it. This results to a smaller wake and reduced drag.

Dimples also help players to put backspin on a shot forcing the golf ball break off on the putting green.

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

When William Taylor applied the dimple pattern to a Haskell ball in 1905, golf balls finally took their modern shape.

From then on, dimpled golf balls were officially used in every golf tournament. In 1921, the golf balls took its shape with standard size and weight.

Today, there is a rich selection of golf balls to match different golf game and condition. There are golf balls that offer control, while some offer range. In whatever ways golf balls vary, only one thing is common and understood. 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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