There are alarms and excursions in the ball business daily, and the
player takes a devoted interest in them all. The trade is striving with
might and main to put ten yards on to the drive of little Tomkins, and
poor old grandfather, who began his golf at sixty, may think as he goes
off to sleep at night that perhaps by the morning there will be a new
ball on the market which will enable him to get his handicap down to 20.
The good inventors are doing all that they can for him. They are trying
everything and each thing in all possible different ways. The other day
a great professional was taking stock of his shop, and he found that he
had twenty-seven different varieties of rubber-cored balls in hand. And
many golfers feel that they must try them all and each new one as it
comes out. The evolution of the golf ball is one of the most wonderful
things of its kind. All of us who have played golf for more than five
years can plume ourselves on the fact that we lived in golf in the
earlier era of the gutta; it is strange to think that possibly half of
the present golfing population cannot say that, so quickly has the game
been coming on of late. But not one golfer in five thousand of those
living now played in the days of the feather-stuffed ball, which was the
pioneer. It had the game to itself up to 1848, which was the year that
the gutta came in. St. Andrews was the great centre of manufacture of
the “featheries,” and in the shop of Allan Robertson alone there were
some three thousand a year made. Of course three thousand rubber-cores
would be nothing in these days, but making a ball was a big job then,
and they were expensive, costing about four shillings each. And a single
topped shot with an iron finished them absolutely! The ballmakers bought
the little leather cases ready made from the St. Andrews saddlers, a
small hole being left to stuff the feathers in. The feathers were
boiled, and it took a large hatful to stuff a ball tight with them.
Mr. Campbell of Saddell is believed to have taken the first gutta balls
to St. Andrews, and when he did so there was consternation everywhere.
They thought the trade in the featheries would be ruined, and that
anyone could make the new balls. So an attempt was made to boycott them,
and it is even said that Allan Robertson bought up all the lost balls
that were found in the whins and destroyed them by fire! Tom Morris was
working in his shop then, and they quarrelled so violently the first day
when Tom used a gutta that they parted for ever. Tom himself tells the
story in this way: “I can remember the circumstances well. Allan could
not reconcile himself at first to the new ball at all, just in the same
way as Mr. John Low and many other golfers could not take to the Haskell
when it first appeared. But the gutta became the fashion very quickly,
as the rubber-cored ball has done, so what could we do? One day, and it
is one that will always be clearly stamped on my memory, I had been out
playing golf with a Mr. Campbell of Saddell, and I had the misfortune to
lose all my supply of balls, which were, you can well understand, very
much easier lost in those days, as the fairway of the course was ever so
much narrower then than it is now, and had thick, bushy whins close in
at the side. But never mind that. I had, as I said, run short of balls,
and Mr. Campbell kindly gave me a gutta one to try. I took to it at
once, and as we were playing in, it so happened that we met Allan
Robertson coming out, and someone told him that I was playing a very
good game with one of the new gutta balls, and I could see fine, from
the expression of his face, that he did not like it at all, and when we
met afterwards in his shop, we had some high words about the matter, and
there and then we parted company, I leaving his employment. There are
two big bushes out there in Allan’s old garden. Well, one of them was
planted by him and the other by me, just about that same time, so they
cannot be young bushes now.” But by 1850 the guttas were in general use
and nobody was much the worse.
It is odd to reflect that golfers were very near the rubber core several
times during the fifty-four years that the gutta held office. As we were
told in the big law case, an old lady made balls that were wound with
rubber thread to make them bounce more; but, nearer to our rubber-core,
there were two golfers who at different times and places are said to
have made what was to all intents and purposes just the same ball in
principle that we use to-day, but not so thoroughly made and perfected.
One of these golfers used to make them and give them to his friends.
But there was no advertising and not so much enterprise in the way of
companies with big capital in those days, and these inventors let their
chance go by. What a chance! There were millions, and millions again, in
their idea.
None the less the Americans deserve the credit for being the men who
gave us the rubber-cored ball as we know it. But for their belief in it,
and their enterprise, there would have been no rubber-cores to-day, and
perhaps far fewer golfers. Let me tell the real story of how they came
by their idea and their determination. In the early summer of 1898,
Mr. Coburn Haskell was the guest of Mr. Wirk, one of the magnates of the
American rubber industry, at his house in Cleveland, Ohio, and both
being golfers, they golfed all day and talked golf during dinner and
afterwards. It was these dinner conversations that brought about the
Haskell ball, revolutionised the game, and made an industry which is the
most thriving of all connected with sport. Both gentlemen agreed that
they wanted a better ball than the gutta, something that would go
farther. At last, after many sittings, one of them observed that
something might be done by winding rubber under tension. Winding it
without such tension would result in the ball being too soft. This idea
was elaborated during the next night or two, and then Mr. Wirk hurried
away to his factory, obtained some rubber strands, and he and
Mr. Haskell spent nearly a day in winding, by their own hands and in
secret, the first ball of the new era. They covered it with gutta-percha
and gave it to a professional to try, without informing him of the
nature of what he was trying. They watched anxiously for the result,
and with the very first shot that the man had with it he carried a
bunker that had never been carried before, beating the best drive that
had ever been made on that course by many yards. Then the two makers
smiled happily at each other. They knew that they were “on a good
thing.” It took more than two years to invent a machine to do the
winding, and some time longer to perfect the process. Then the Haskell
killed the gutta in a season. Before that Britain supplied America with
all her balls. Afterwards she sent none; but the makers of the Haskell
bought 30,000 dozen that had been sent over, for the sake of the
gutta-percha of which they were made, and at the bare price of that
material.
In the first five months of 1903 the American people shipped 40,000
dozen of their balls to this country. So were the tables turned. Now
they ship very few indeed, as we make our balls ourselves. Instead, they
are threatening American golfers as to what will happen if they catch
them playing on American courses with British balls. Of the little ball
that was thought out over the dinner table in Ohio on those hot summer
evenings there are now half a million used in a week in the busy season
on British courses, and some fifteen millions, at a cost of about a
million pounds, in the course of the season!
But yet not one man in a thousand who looks upon his beautiful white
rubber core when it is new knows what and how much is inside it. In one
ball there are 192 yards of thread, the whole of which is stretched to
eight times its original length, so that, as it is in the ball, there
are 1536 yards of it--nearly a mile. This thread has to be wound round
something. It has commonly been wound round a tiny piece of wood; now,
in the case of some balls, it is being wound round little bags of
gelatine and things like that. Some people are under the delusion that
in the case of such balls the whole centre is gelatine, and that there
is no rubber.