The history of the golf ball

The modern game of golf is a sport with an illustrious and lengthy history: the first recorded game occurred sometime around 1297. Of course what would golf be without that ubiquitous little sphere – the golf ball – that we’ve all seen many more times than once? We’ve come a long way to reach the four-layer soft-cover/firm-core surlyn golf balls that are now in use!

Believe it or not, for over 400 hundred years, golf balls were made entirely of wood; this of course meant a golf ball that fared feebly in terms of aerodynamics and the like. This poor state of affairs persisted until the invention of what we now call the feathery ball (also known as the feather or featherie ball). The feathery ball itself was hand sewn cowhide outside, and very tightly packed goose feathers inside (hence the name). The leather and feathers were boiled separately and then hastily formed together into a ball before anything began drying. At the time this was a revolutionary invention that really added a lot of new dynamics to the game of golf; this ball was not only hard, but could fly over 250 yards, and was generally far superior in terms of flight characteristics to its wooden forbearers.