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Golf today is played in just about every country in the world and the leading players are household names watched by millions of people as they play in a series of annual tournaments at golf courses which frequently look as if they were painted as a film backdrop instead of being carved from Mother Nature herself. Have you ever thought though about the history of this popular sport?

Naturally there are various versions of the history of golf as people and states want to stake their claim in the history books. However most historians of the sport are agreed that the game of golf was born over one thousand years ago in Scotland.

In its earliest days what we now know as golf was little more than a pastime to while away the time for bored sheep herders who competed against each other by hitting small stones with sticks to see who could get their stone into a nearby rabbit burrow.

This simple pastime spread quickly however and started to attract much wider attention from the population at large finally reaching all the way up to the top of Scottish society with King James II and Mary Queen of Scots both being thought to have been keen golfers in the 16th century.

It was simply a question of time therefore before the game was formerly adopted as a national pursuit and in the 17th century the first golf course was created at St. Andrews and not long after this the first set of rules for the game were drawn up and published in 1744.

Golf really took off however towards the end of the 19th century when it crossed the pond and a number of tremendous golf courses were made in the eastern United States including Winged Foot in New York and Pine Valley in New Jersey.

From this starting point golf caught the imagination of wealthier Americans and the game grew very quickly during the 20th century with perhaps the height of its expansion occurring in the 1920s.

Today of course golf is played and followed by many millions of people from every walk of life. In fact, in the United States alone some figures put the number of regular golfers at more than thirty million. This is not too bad for a pastime which was originally designed to amuse a few bored Scottish sheep herders.

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As Tiger Woods stated during the 2007 PGA Championship, technology in a golf ball has dramatically changed since they were last at Southern Hills in 2001. Golf ball have been made of many different things and many different ways. Here is a quick history lesson on how the golf ball has evolved.

Again, the construction and design of golf balls has changed drastically since the game.s inception. One of the main responsibilities of an original golf professional was to be the maker of golf balls. Some of the very first golf balls were made out of a leather pouch which in turn was packed full of goose feathers. The feathers were wet when being inserted into the pouch. The .ball. would then dry and the feathers would become hard and solid. A good drive with a goose feather ball or a .feathery. was thought to be in the 150-175 yard range. Featheries were the most common ball used up until 1848.

Around 1848, the Gutta-percha ball was created. These golf balls were made of the dried gum from Malaysian sapodilla trees. These golf balls were very smooth initially and were much more difficult to control as opposed to the .featheries.. However, with use, these balls became scuffed up, their exteriors becoming rough. The .new aerodynamics. allowed the golf balls to be controlled much easier. After this discovery, the gutta-percha balls started being manufactured with rough exteriors. This construction is equivalent to, and the basis of, modern day dimpled golf balls.

In 1898, the Haskell golf ball was invented by Coburn Haskell. Haskell introduced the one-piece rubber cored ball which was universally adopted by 1901 after it proved so effective in the British and US Opens. The Haskell golf balls looked just like the Gutta-percha balls. The good news for the average golfer was the Haskell ball gave the average golfer an extra 20 yards from the tee. The Haskell golf balls were constructed from a solid rubber core wrapped in rubber thread encased in a gutta-percha sphere. This enabled W. Millison to develop a thread-winding machine which allowed the Haskell balls to be mass-produced and therefore more affordable to all golfers.

Throughout this period of the American Industrial Revolution, there was a lot of experimentation with the patterns on golf balls and how to manufacture them. This is one of the reasons why golf ball collecting from this era is so interesting. When William Taylor first applied the dimple pattern to a Haskell ball in 1905, golf balls took on their modern form. The dimple pattern maximizes lift while minimizing drag.

After the turn of the century, manufacturers continued to experiment with golf ball design. In 1906, Goodrich introduced the pneumatic ball. The pneumatic ball was a Haskell ball with a compressed air core, which at that time was prone to expansion with heat. This lead to what you could imagine would be some funny or uncomfortable moments on the golf course as the ball from time to time explode. Other substances were experimented with including mercury, cork and metal cores. Seventy years after the turn of the century, Spalding introduced the Executive which was the first two piece golf ball.

The R&A and USGA have standardized the size and weight of the ball. Since then further constraints have been proposed which are detailed in the rules. The manufacturers are now experimenting with many different materials and size of the covers.

With all of the advances in recent golf ball technology, today most golf balls have a durable cover. Any player should ask their local PGA Professional for some advice using the player.s specific ball speeds, etc. Then try a few different balls from manufacturers before making a final choice. Try a few different balls in the appropriate category for you and find one that makes you feel lucky. After learning from your local PGA Professional and trying out a few different manufactures, you should have confidence in your golf ball.

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Article Source: ArticlesBase.com - Golf Balls - A Quick History