Five Centuries of Biodegradable Golf

A golf tee for the ecology minded is offered by Spectrum Marketing Co. of London, Ontario. It is made of plastic and disintegrates within 90 days after being exposed to the elements. Spectrum says the plastic even contains a fertilizer that is released as the tee dissolves. An advanced model contains grass seed to help restore tee areas. --The Wall Street Journal

The biodegradable tee is only the capstone to a steady technological advance that has revolutionized golf equipment since 1603, when William Mayne, a bowmaker by trade, became official clubmaker to James I of England.

Tees only began to roll off the assembly line after World War II. For several centuries prior to this technological watershed, caddies lugged troughs of wet sand slung around their necks. The golfer tapped a spot with his driver head and the caddie molded a pinch of sand on which to perch the ball.

Only the constant perfecting of tees, clubs, and balls has allowed what was once a prohibitively expensive and difficult game to gain its current popularity. Equipment for most other major sports has remained relatively stable since their invention.

You Know Me Al

Ever since Abner Doubleday paced off the first diamond, the horsehide and Louisville slugger have remained in their pristine state, although the introduction of the rabbit ball prompted a cascade of vitriol from Ring Lardner and his contemporaries. Basketball has altered little since Dr. Naismith tacked up his peach basket, and the essential changes in football have come in strategy.

The dimpled, true-flying, rubber-centered golf ball of today, though, is a recent phenomenon. For the over 400 years since James I of England took up the game, skilled individual manufacturers made an oval or oblate golf ball known as the feathery, which required painstaking labor.

Allan Robertson (1915-59), the chief maker and supplier of feathery balls, stitched a spherical bag out of cowhide which was then stuffed with boiled feathers. Enough feathers to fill a top hat were packed into each ball. The unreliable and easily rotted feathery endured until around 1848 when the discovery of gutta percha, an elastic gum found in the forests of Malaysia, sent shock waves through the golf industry.

Heads Up

The malleable gutta percha could be rolled into balls know as gutties, which then hardened. The gutties, however, were prone to duck to earth after leaving the club face until it was realized that older, pock-marked balls had a truer flight. Gutties were then deliberately battered with hammers before use.

The lively and resilient modern ball was the brainchild of Coburn Haskell, who proposed a rubber core. Nowadays, wind tunnels are used to gauge flight trajectory and a miniature guillotine tests the toughness of the cover. The latest breakthrough in the industry is the truncated dimple, and a controversy rages over the relative merits of balata or surlyn covered balls. Balata is a kind of tree gum, and surlyn is a synthetic material pioneered by Dupont.

The post-war era has witnessed a mind-boggling proliferation in the number of clubs, and new materials and precision casting have infinitely raised the ceiling on distance and accuracy. Until players were restricted to using only 14 clubs, caddies traipsed along with up to 25, causing golfers to ridicule "shots bought in the shops."

William Mayne and his successors set the nineteenth century trend of making shafts from ash or hazel and club heads of blackthorn, beech, apple, or pear.

The gutta percha ball required a more resilient shaft; the solution was supplied by hickory, which reigned supreme until the advent of steel in the age of Bobby Jones.

Golf was played with one all-purpose club until irons--called rut irons--were pioneered to excavate featheries from tracks and ruts. The gutty fostered the invention of the cleek, about the equivalent of the modern 2-iron.

Tom Morris, the winner of four British Opens, introduced the niblick for pitch shots. The great J. H. Taylor mastered the mashie or modern 5-iron which derived its name "from its effect on the ball when entrusted to unskillful hands."

Too Much Torque

The contemporary golfer can purchase wedges with built-in air foils and much lighter graphite and titanium shafts. Newer variations include braided, "anti-torque" shafts, weighted tungsten disks to expand the sweet spot, bevelled leading edges, cambered soles, and even crescent-shaped clubheads.

What has remained constant is the skill of golfing champions, independent of time and revolutionary equipment.

Pepper

The best known example of the enduring greatness of golf's champions is Gene Sarazen. When he was seventy-one, he played in the 1973 British Open at Troon, fifty years after his first appearance there. The dapper, knickerbockered Sarazen aced the 126-yd. hole known as the Postage Stamp because of its small green. He finished with a 79 and shot an 81 for his second round, sinking an explosion shot for a 2 on the Postage Stamp.

After the round, Sarazen happened to overhear a conversation between two elderly members lounging in the clubhouse. "If I'm not mistaken" one of them said, "Sarazen had a total of 160 for his two rounds in 1923--a 75 and an 85. This year once gain he had a total of 160--a 79 and an 81. He hasn't improved at all over the years."