The Soul of Golf

by P. A. Vaile

At the time this ball was produced I stated emphatically that I believed that the result of the agitation and discussion would be to knock the pimples off the golf ball. This statement was, of course, ridiculed by the makers of golf balls, and quite wisely too, for they had tens of thousands of pimply golf balls which they had to dispose of, and it was not their business to agree with my ideas of altering the make of the golf ball until they had disposed of their stock. They have, however, now no prejudice whatever in the matter, and the leading manufacturers both here and in America are pushing balls which are marked by indentation. They certainly were a long time after my manufacturers in realising the importance of the principle, but they are now endeavouring to make up for lost time. One firm, Messrs. A. G. Spalding & Bros., is pushing three balls as their leading lines. These are the Glory Dimple, the Midget Dimple, and the Domino Dimple. All these balls are what are now called dimple balls, and they meet with great favour in many quarters, although there are still a number of golfers who swear by the bramble-marking.

During the course of this long controversy I suggested that it would be a good idea if the balls which were marked by excrescences and those which were marked by indentations were subjected to a test by being mechanically propelled. Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey, the famous wild-fowler and author of The Projectile Throwing Engines of the Ancients, wrote to me and very kindly volunteered to carry out the experiment if I would send him the balls I wished him to test. I naturally accepted his very kind offer, and sent him a variety of golf balls to be tested. Sir Ralph is the possessor of some very remarkable catapults built on the principles of the old Roman engines of war, and with these he conducted a series of experiments, which were so interesting that they deserve to be permanently recorded for the benefit of future generations. His conclusions were published in two articles which occupied about three columns of The Times, and they are of such an instructive nature that I propose to quote somewhat fully from them.

Sir Ralph showed quite clearly that in a very great number of cases the centre of gravity of the ball is untrue. Quite a number of golfers would think that it is not a matter of very great importance if the centre of gravity of a golf ball is untrue. Anyone who thinks this may speedily undeceive himself by a small experiment suggested by Sir Ralph. Let him cut a hole in the side of a golf ball, insert a piece of lead or half a dozen shot and fill the hole up with wax or soap and then put with that ball. He will be astonished to find what a peculiar course it takes.

Of course, not many golf balls are loaded like this, but it is beyond any doubt whatever that in many cases the gutta-percha covering of the rubber-core is of very uneven thickness. This in itself and quite apart from the defect of marking by excrescences which I have already referred to, is sufficient to account for the very bad running of many golf balls.

I may say, too, that I believe this untrueness of the centre of gravity is responsible for the double swerve which one frequently sees in a truly hit golf ball. A swerve which is obtained from the application of spin to the golf ball, almost invariably is continuous and in the one direction, but I have frequently seen well-hit drives by the most famous players swerve to the right, back again to the left and resume their original course. This has happened with such perfect regularity in many cases that there must unquestionably be a definite reason for it, apart from rotation applied by contact with the club, and the only explanation which I can give of it in any way at all is that it is caused by an untrue centre.

The shape, resiliency, and centre of gravity of the golf ball are of vital importance to the player, but the golfer accepts all these matters with a blind faith which is touching in the extreme. A golfer should not accept from a golf ball manufacturer a ball which is not truly spherical, or one which does not fly truly when truly hit, but as a matter of fact almost fifty per cent of the golf balls supplied by the leading makers come within this category. One may take fifty golf balls of any specific sort, and test these for shape, centre of gravity, and weight, and it is an even chance that twenty-five of them will be quite different from the other twenty-five.

It is very easy indeed to test the rubber-cored balls as regards the correctness of their centre of gravity. Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey found that none of the rubber-cored balls was correct as to its centre of gravity, though some were much more incorrect than others, and he found that not one of them was truly spherical in shape. I may say that in a large number of cases I have verified his experiments. Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey's method of testing them for correctness of centre of gravity is so simple that I may give it here for the benefit of any player who desires to see that he is getting a ball which will serve him truly in so far as regards this important particular.

Sir Ralph placed the ball which he desired to test in a basin of water and waited until it came to rest. When the ball had come to rest, there was naturally a small portion of it protruding from the water. Sir Ralph marked the centre of this spot with a pencil dot and he found that however carelessly he put the same ball into the water, however much it was rolled about, that the portion of the ball marked with the pencil dot always came upwards out of the water again, and that the actual spot with the pencil mark on it always came to exactly the same place. It was evident from this that the centre of gravity of the balls tested in this manner was considerably untrue.

Sir Ralph found, as might be expected, that the old guttie ball was much truer as regards its centre of gravity than the rubber-cored balls. He tested the gutta-percha ball and the miniature ball which would not float in plain water, in a solution of salt and water.

The experiments which he conducted in connection with these balls were really quite exhaustive. He found that with some of the balls, especially the smaller ones, the dot appeared in two seconds, while some of the others took from four to six seconds to come upward. He arrived at a comparative idea of the error in centre of gravity by placing the dot downwards in the water, and then noting with a stop-watch the time occupied by it in appearing out of the water on top of the ball. He thus took the time in each case from the moment of release to the moment that the pencil dot again came uppermost, and by these means he obtained as accurately as he could with a stop-watch the comparative error of one ball with another in regard to its centre of gravity.