|
The golf ball story continued.....
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. Of course the introduction of "cheap golf balls" ......Next page |
|
(c) 2003-2008 thegolfballfactory.com |