Technology driving whole new ball game

It’s only small — 1.68 inches in diameter — but it has always been a big issue in golf. Almost from the day that the first Scottish shepherd picked up a stick and whacked a wee stone across a field, there have been disputes about golf balls.

As far back as the 1840s, the legendary figure that was Old Tom Morris lost his job working for the man reputed to be the game’s first professional, Allan Robertson. A devotee of the then traditional feathery, Robertson was less than pleased to see his then still youngish assistant bashing a new-fangled gutta-percha ball around the Old Course at St Andrews.

“I had been playing with a Mr Campbell of Saddell,” Old Tom said to HSC Everard in 1905. “And I had the misfortune to lose all my supply of balls. Mr Campbell kindly gave me a gutta 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 I was playing a very good game with one of the new gutta balls. I could see from the expression on his face that he did not like it at all.