Dat Damn Ball. Again.

Filed in archive Golf Equipment on April 16, 2007

In my recent interview with patent lawyer and golfer, David Dawsey, he talked about the patents that had been filed by ball makers like Callaway and Bridgestone.

If you have looked at his site, you have probably found the post about Callaway's liquid filled golf ball patent.

The biggest advances in golf equipment over the past 12 or so years have come in the clubs themselves: the bigger head drivers with their surprising spring-like effect that has caused endless arguments about prodigious distance and the widespread use of hybrid clubs which offer the amateur and professional a wonderful alternative to long irons.

The golf ball has made more quiet advances.

Like golf clubs, golf balls are bound by rules laid down by the USGA and R and A on size and weight.

Balls are governed by one more rule: initial velocity off the club face.

Ball manufacturers have always hunted for scientific breakthroughs or advances to make their golf balls fly further.

They began their search for distance with the dimple.

Frank Thomas, the former technical director of the USGA and the man who developed rules for golf ball distance, has a wonderful article on his site about the humble golf ball dimple.

Thomas points out that a smooth golf ball, struck by a touring professional today, would travel about 130 yards!

Add dimples and the same pro can hit the same ball up to 290 yards.

But, as many of us know, those dimples are not in a random pattern. They have been carefully designed and placed on the ball in order to maximize aerodynamics.

When you strike today's golf ball, you are putting into effect the same laws of aerodynamics that are used in the aerospace industry and in motorsports (think formula one, in particular).

Too many dimples defeat their purpose; too few do the same. It's ends up as a "Goldilocks solution": ball makers look for the design, dispersion and dimple depth that is just right.

So Callaway's recent patent on a liquid filled ball just might take the golf ball in a new direction entirely.

By the way, the maximum distance for a golf ball as determined by Frank Thomas and his staff at the USGA was 296.8 yards. That was in 1976.

New ball testing procedures introduced about five years ago have modified that number.

It now stands at 320 yards.