Invention Of Golfing

Golf itself is not an invention, but since people first hit a ball into a hole with a stick more than 2,000 years ago it has inspired an inordinate number of inventors to find ways of improving the game and the equipment used to play it.

Golf balls evolved from wooden spheres to hand-sewn leather cases filled with feathers, known as Featheries and invented c.1618. Featheries were superseded by solid gutta-percha balls, known as Gutties and invented by the Rev. Adam Paterson (Scotland) in 1848, and these in turn were superseded by a ball comprising a solid core. This type of ball, known as the Bounding Billy, was invented by Coburn Haskell and his playing partner Bertram George Work (both USA) and patented by Haskell in 1898. Two years later W. Millinson of the Haskell Golf Ball Co. (USA) patented a machine for winding the rubber thread, leading to the mass production of the new type of ball. The rubber core and winding remained standard for the greater part of the century, despite the threat from the invention (by Donald B. Poynter, USA, in 1968) of a walking golf ball. Poynter's patent stated: 'The walking golf ball comprises a spherical hollow casing containing a motor, and legs activated by the motor cause the golf ball to advance with a walking motion towards a cup or other target...' Which put a new spin on the famous description of golf as 'a good walk spoiled'.

Early golf clubs ranged from sticks to shepherd's crooks and then progressed to purpose-designed wooden clubs. Arthur F. Knight (USA) invented the first steel-shafted golf club, patented in November 1910, but this revolutionary idea was nothing compared with the invention in 1960, by Ashley Pond III (USA), of a 'Breakable Simulated Golf Club'. Pond's patent stated that the object of his invention was 'to provide a golf club for temperamental golfers wherein the shaft of the club is deliberately constructed to break when struck against the ground, a tree, or other inanimate elements when the anger of the golfer reaches a mercurial height, and wherein the emotion  of the golfer requires some physical manifestation to achieve emotional release'.

Source - The Book Of Inventions by Ian Harrison