The Physics of Golf essays

The Physics of Golf essays As anyone who has played a round of golf will attest to, the sport is based around many fundamental principals of physics. These basic laws are involved with every aspect of the game from how a player swings the club to how the ball moves through the air on its way toward the pin. It is the challenge that physics presents to the golfer that has allowed the game, and equipment used, to develop so drastically over the past one hundred years. The first golf balls used were called featheries. They were made with a horsehide cover packed with wet goose feathers. When the balls dried they became extremely hard. The major flaw with the featheries was that they could not be used when the conditions were wet because they would soften again.[5] Despite the flaw of the featheries, they remained the only ball used up until the middle of the 19th century when the revolutionary gutta-percha ball was invented. The new ball, sometimes referred to as a guttie, was molded from the warmed, dried gum of the sapodilla tree.[5] These balls were cheap to manufacture and opened up the game of golf to a more diverse socio-economic group. This in turn made the game of golf very popular, which led to dramatic improvements in golf balls in the next decades. In 1900 a unique event occurred. Some claim that it can be called the first professional sports endorsement. The Spalding Company paid Englands Harry Vardon a considerable sum of money to come to the United States to demonstrate what he could do in winning tournaments using the latest ball design. He won the U.S. Open using the new rubber-wound Haskell ball.[5] This led to another major revolution in the design of the golf ball. Not only was this ball cheap to manufacture, but also it could be hit farther than any other ball previously used. The Haskell ball was such a success that it was not until 1968 that the two-piece balls of today emerged in the market. Obviously...