Over 600 Years, the Golf Ball Has Evolved From a Primitive Wood Sphere to a Smart Ball With Cutting-Edge Sensors
Tracing the centuries of innovation that sent the golf ball on a wild ride through history
Historians speculate that the first golfer was likely a shepherd who grew bored with his work one day, swung his crook and made contact with a rock that went flying. He hit more, and “purely by accident, one of the stones disappeared into a hole,” legendary sportswriter Herbert Warren Wind mused in 1948. Once a second shepherd appeared to compete—or perhaps as soon as one of them began cursing over a misdirected ball—golf was invented.
The earliest man-made golf balls ever uncovered were primitive spheres made of hardwood on the east coast of Scotland in the 14th century. By the early 1600s, players were using balls of cowhide stuffed with goose feathers. When doused with water, the leather shrank, and the feathers expanded, and this rough-hewn ball would have flown well for the day, enabling golfers to make truer shots. But the craftsmanship was expensive, creating a sport primarily enjoyed by the well-off. With the advent of golf country clubs that required membership fees during the next century, it officially became a game for the elite.
The idea for a greatly improved permutation came in the 1840s. Robert Paterson, a young Scottish divinity student, became transfixed by the possibilities of gutta-percha—dried gum of the Malaysian sapodilla tree, which he found as protective filler in a package from Singapore containing a statue of a Hindu god. Paterson heated the sapodilla gum and massaged it until he’d formed a sphere and later painted it white. The so-called gutty ball was bouncier, easier to control and much more affordable, making the game more accessible.
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This article is a selection from the July/August 2025 issue of Smithsonian magazine
The inventor of the modern ball was Coburn Haskell, who had an epiphany while strolling through the B.F. Goodrich rubber factory in Akron, Ohio. Spotting piles of elastic, Haskell had the idea of winding up some of the rubber yarn into a golf ball. Haskell eventually added a solid rubber core and a cover. Legendary golfer Bobby Jones—co-founder of the Augusta National Golf Club as well as the Masters Tournament—described the Haskell ball, first brought to market in 1901, as the most important development in the history of the sport. Jones was displeased, however, that the Haskell ball required less skill and more strength for long shots, and lamented that larger courses were needed to accommodate the greater distances the new balls sailed.
Golfers eventually discovered that scuffed golf balls were traveling farther than new ones. Dimples were soon added—between 300 and 500, depending on your taste—after physicists confirmed that air flowed more freely over these balls, minimizing drag, and the increased spin created more lift. And recently, some players have begun sharpening their game by using smart golf balls, with embedded sensors that enable golfers to collect analytics about their shots, identify strengths and weaknesses in their game—and, of course, to help locate those pesky lost balls.
For many enthusiasts, these innovations make the game more appealing and even addictive, enabling duffers on public courses to command drives and putts that golfers floundering on the sandy Scottish links more than 600 years ago could never imagine.