Article 2. Written February 2025. Copyright Gavin Bottrell. 

Contact me using info@timewarpgolf.com

How round were Feathery Golf Balls? 

I started collecting old clubs and balls in 1998 two years after taking up the game and I quickly became hooked. It didn’t take me long to realise that physically handling and comparing items was of great benefit and greatly accelerates the learning process. Placing an iron from 1920 next to one from 1880 highlights the clear differences in ways that are difficult to appreciate from only looking at photographs. In 2007 I achieved one of my early goals – I purchased a feathery golf ball. This little battered ball intrigued me. I started to wonder who made it and how it was made. As a rookie collector I had read₁ that feather balls were not round! With no wisdom of my own I took this at face value, but it didn’t sit well with me even then; why would a golfer play with a ball that wasn’t round? Over the last twenty-five years I’ve come to realise there are a considerable number of factoids pertaining to golf history - a factoid is an item of unreliable information that is reported and repeated so often that it becomes accepted as fact. The purpose of this series of articles is to critically analyse the widely-made statements pertaining to feathery golf balls and definitively sort out fact from fiction. 

A quick search on Google, using relevant terms, will return countless websites stating that the feathery golf ball was invented in 1618. I will not debate this assertion here but suffice to say I do not agree with it. A very high proportion of these websites will also state they were fragile and not round.  Some of these websites refer to books published within the last thirty years or so and to analyse all of them would require a huge amount of time and effort for little gain, therefore, I will highlight entries in books that have been held as being authoritative. 

In 1997 Hotchkiss published “500 Years of Golf Balls”₂. The author offers no new ideas on the subject of feather balls, but does include vast swathes of an earlier book, with acknowledgments. Perhaps Hotchkiss felt that everything that needed to be written on the subject of feather balls already had been! The earlier book he quotes is “The Curious History of The Golf Ball” by Martin₃ published in 1968. This author states “the leather was cut in four, three or two lobes….like the petals of a flower”.  This is extremely puzzling, because if the author had viewed even a handful of feather balls he surely would’ve realised this is completely incorrect; every authentic feathery ball is made from a central rectangular strip, with the short sides sewn together, and two circular end caps. He goes on to say, “the feather ball…was never precisely round”. 

In the early 1990’s the market for “golf antiques” ballooned₄. Collectors, and those interested in financial speculation, were eager for any information to help them. One such book, printed in 1993, was the Antique Golf Ball Reference & Price Guide₅ by Leo M.Kelly Jr. In a section entitled “Featheries Were Not Round”, he states, “a well stuffed feathery had a decidedly oblong shape in the polar dimension but would normally be nearly round in the opposite direction. The more loosely a feather ball was stuffed the more round it would appear from all sides”. He goes on, “A fact generally understood by many, but often noted in historical accounts of feather balls, is the absence of a perfect spherical shape”. Kelly continues “many old photographs of featheries show that ball after ball has the characteristic oblong shape.” He shows outline drawings of oblong balls by Allan Robertson, Tom Morris, Gourlay and Gressick. Kelly offers the following explanations of why balls were oblong: i) The three piece cover design allowed for more sideways stretch of the two round end pieces, ii) The arrangement of the stitching made the ball prone to stretch in the horizontal plane away from the middle strip iii) The amount of feathers needed to stuff into a heavier ball caused some balls to be oblong in shape. He goes on “despite not being very round to begin with, featheries did fly and roll with remarkable trueness. They would roll with accuracy on the crude putting surfaces of the times better than they putt over today’s slick greens.” How he comes to those conclusions is not explained.

There is no doubt that Kelly had read the book that had influenced my early understanding; Adamson’s 1985 work Allan Robertson, Golfer, His Life and Times₁. Chapter 2 is titled “Not Round but Oblong”, so it offers the reader promise of some insight into why this is so. It is very disappointing to find that the author offers no original thoughts of his own but merely quotes James Balfour₆ writing in 1887 which is covered below.

In 1952 A History of Golf in Britain₇ was published with articles by different learned authors. Sir Guy Campbell states “the leather for the balls was first cut into four pieces, reduced later to three, and later still, to two”.  This is possibly the text that influenced Martin only sixteen years later in 1968. Campbell also says, “Feather balls were far more often slightly oblong than round.”

Going back to 1910, a landmark publication was Harry B.Woods’ Golfing Curios and The Like₈. Woods reprints a description of how feather balls were made attributing it to Peter Baxter’s book₉ published in 1899, however, Baxter had just re-printed Peter’s text₁₀ from 1890. Woods was clearly in personal contact with Old Tom Morris so it is very puzzling why he says that the feathers were stuffed “through two narrow slots left in the leather” – this is incorrect – Woods’ is mistaking the two sets of closing stitches either side of the seam for two separate smaller holes. He also gives details of a bet made at Blackheath which, as I have written about₁₁, has led people to incorrectly believe what was possible with a feather ball in terms of driving distance. Woods says “the balls were not usually round or spherical, but generally inclined to be egg-shaped, notwithstanding which, however, they “putted” with marvellous accuracy, even upon the comparatively crude greens of “the 40’s” ”.  

Two insightful books were published in the latter years of the 19^th Century by two men who had played golf for nearly fifty years.  Henry Thomas Peter wrote Golfing Reminiscences by an Old Hand₁₀ in 1890. He was born in 1825 and wrote "my first acquaintance with the game began in 1837 when a boy at Madras School, St Andrews”. Peter clearly played with feather balls as a youngster and some years later as a young man partnered Allan Roberston in foursome matches. Peter gives a fascinating account of the making of a feather ball and although he comments on their durability he doesn’t specifically comment on their roundness. Notably, with regards to the new gutta percha balls he states “I believe I may with justice claim the credit of having first brought them to the notice of the golfing world and this at the spring meeting of the Innerleven Club in 1848” having acquired them from a shop in Edinburgh. This indicates that the gutta balls were likely being used by some players around the Edinburgh area, but it seems he was the first person to show them to the premier ball makers of St.Andrews, namely Allan Robertson and Tom Morris.

Only three years previous in 1887 James Balfour had published Reminiscences of Golf on St.Andrews Links₆.  He states that he’d started playing on the links in1842 so he, too, had played golf for around a decade with the feather ball. Balfour gives a brief description of the making of balls and states “A man could make only four balls in a day. They were thus scarce and expensive, and were not round, but rather oblong”.

In 1869, The Boy’s Book of Sports, Games, Exercises and Pursuits₁₂ gives a description of golf. Even though the feather ball had been superceded by the gutta ball almost twenty years earlier they state, “As the leather dries, it contracts, and the result is a mass, heavy as a stone, though not perfectly round.”  This is the earliest statement I have located that specifically refers to the roundness of feathery golf balls.

The first book of comprehensive golf instruction was The Golfer’s Manual₁₃ by H.B.Farnie, in 1857. The author says the leather case was “sewed into the similitude of a sphere” but doesn’t go into any details regarding their shape.

Measuring the Overall Roundness of Feather Balls.

 Up until the summer of 2024 I had viewed perhaps two dozen feather balls in person and had been able to measure and weigh thirteen examples by a range of makers. In December 2024, thanks to the Wilson Family Research Fund, I was able to visit the World Golf Museum in St.Andrews, Scotland and measure a further thirty-three examples to make a total sample size of forty-five balls. Over the years, having made quite a number of replicas, I have developed a simple system for measuring and calculating the roundness of balls using three diameters which I label H, D1 and D2. H is the height of the ball when the round end caps form the north and south poles. D1 is the horizontal diameter when the vertical central strip is at one edge. D2 is the horizontal diameter perpendicular to D1. See Figure 1 below

 

Figure 1. Method of Measuring Ball Dimensions

This method avoids the area of the closing hole through which the ball is stuffed.

Of the forty-five balls inspected the mean average of the dimensions are: H= 44.7mm,  D1= 44.2mm, D2= 44.0mm. Hence, the average height of balls is only half a millimetre greater than the width. I then recorded whether a ball’s height (H) or one of its diameters (D1 or D2) was greater. If the height is greater then it is an “egg” and if one of the horizontal diameters is greater it is a “donut”. I then calculated the difference between the largest and smallest values of H, D1 and D2 to give a quantitative measure of overall roundness (Y). The lesser the Y value the rounder the ball. 

Figure 2. Ball Condition Ranging from Split to Mint versus Y (Out of Roundness)

Thirteen of the balls have Y values less than 1mm. I was expecting balls in better condition to have lower Y values but this is not born out by the results. Nine of the balls have Y values greater than 2mm. Of these, six are more elongated in the vertical direction (“eggs”) and three in the horizontal direction (“donuts”). All of these nine balls look to have been played with. Only one ball has a Y value more than 4mm.

Any ball with a Y value of 2mm or less still feels relatively spherical in the hand. I can also confirm that such balls roll surprisingly straight when putted. More than 80% of the balls inspected meet this criteria and they vary in condition from mint to fair. It is interesting that one of the five balls I have deemed mint condition (RNA 04 017) only just meets this criteria.

The results show that well used balls can be as round as mint condition ones, and that condition is not directly linked to roundness. One ball (ref. MLC 04 023) is in fair condition but is over 4mm out of round. The makers name is not evident and it is oblong in the vertical direction making it an “egg”.   The ball that has the lowest Y value is shown in the Figure 3. It was made by John Gourlay, has general wear marks through use, and subjectively I’ve rated it as being in “good condition”.

Figure 3. Ball made by John Gourlay (Ref. GB10) with the least Out of Round Y Value

Factors affecting Roundness and Bulges and Flat Spots

The ball shown is figure 3 is the most round of all I inspected but it doesn’t appear so in the photographs. This is because it is difficult to obtain a smooth curved profile across the seams. For this reason the ball appears to be slightly donut shaped, that is wider than it is tall. Additionally, the area around the eye hole, indicated by the arrows, bulges outwards. This indicates that the measuring method I have used does not tell the full story regarding ball roundness. It may be that a ball just happens to have three closely matching diameters but has lots of other bulging areas. 

Figure 4 below shows a ball (ref WGM 04 002) made by Tom Morris in mint condition, which has clearly never been played with. However, it has an out of round value (Y) of 1.7 and is elongated in the vertical direction (i.e. it is an “egg”).

Figure 4. A ball made by Tom Morris (ref WGM 04 002)  in mint condition with flat spot

When examined, the most notable thing about the ball is the large flat spot around the area of the stuffing hole, indicated by the arrow. It is very evident when the ball is held in the hand, and my expectation is that this flat spot would cause some problems when putting, though I did not try it out. A similar flat spot was evident on another ball inspected, RNA 04 010, also made by Tom Morris. This ball I rated as excellent, not mint, because of some cracking in the paint, however, the condition of the stampings indicate this ball has never been played with. It is shown below in Figure 5.

Figure 5. Tom Morris ball (RNA 04 010) with flat spot at eye hole indicated by arrow.

This ball has an Y value of 1.9, so is within 0.1mm of the other Tom Morris ball. I believe both balls are likely to have left Tom’s hands in their current shape, complete with flat spots. Why should this be?

Firstly, let’s consider overall ball roundness. From practical experimentation I have found this is governed by two factors: the dimensions and quality of the leather. A small variation in measuring and cutting out can lead to a big difference in overall shape if the ball is stuffed to the required degree. The latter words are very important to note. There is a tendency to believe that balls were stuffed until a certain size was achieved and in some older pictures relating to feather ball manufacture a set of wooden callipers can be seen which may have influenced this idea. I believe callipers were of no use for making good feathery balls. Balls can begin to feel quite round when as little as half the final amount of feathers have been stuffed in to the case. However, I realised many years ago that to perform well a ball must be stuffed to a very high degree. In my opinion Kelly is wrong when he says “the amount of feathers needed to stuff into a heavier ball caused some balls to be oblong in shape”. A larger ball with more feathers can be as round as a smaller ball with less feathers if they are made correctly.

The quality and physical properties of the leather are critical. Two pieces taken from the same hide can be of different thickness, densities and strength and so will react differently when under load. If the end caps are from the flank of the animal, whilst the strip is from the back, this will undoubtedly result in a very oblong ball. The feather ball-makers of old would’ve known leather and its properties inside out (pun intended!).

Next let’s consider bulging and flat spots. The stuffing process requires the use of a variety of tools and I have found that bulging occurs in the region which is polar opposite to the stuffing hole, but as the ball reaches completion this tends to dissipate. In a letter dated 1903 Kirkpatrick₁₄ states, “When the eyehole is sewn up full enough, it is hammered into shape and left to dry”. If the leather is too stretchy or incorrectly cut, then no amount of hammering will turn a poorly shaped ball into a nice round one. Hammering, though, is particularly useful to flatten out the closing stitches and also smooth the “shoulders” that can arise either side of the seams. The leather is sewn together using a tunnel (sometimes called butt) stitch. It is important to pull the stitches tightly together and this causes local bulging – hammering the seams when the ball is full of feathers can improve this significantly. 

I know that it is advantageous to squeeze the ball in a vice, or use a hammer, to create a flat spot around the stuffing hole prior to putting in the final closing stitches – it allows them to be as tight as possible. I believe this is what is evident on the Tom Morris ball. On balls I have made I usually then use two hemispherical cups in the vice to regain the curvature in this area. I cannot say for sure why Tom didn’t do this on the two balls examined but I have a notion. For a ball to work it must be able to be compressed, and more importantly, it must be able to regain its round shape quickly. In the 1930s the first x-rays were taken to measure the deformation of struck golf balls and scientists were amazed that they deformed up to a third of their diameter. My gut feeling is that feather balls may compress even more. This flat spot is only evident on the two un-played Tom Morris balls out of the forty-five examined. If other mint condition balls by Tom Morris can be located, and if they have similar flat spots, it may indicate that Tom either included, or omitted, a step in the ball-making process that others did not. He may have known one good swipe with a playclub is all that was needed for it to become nice and round again.

The passing of time itself does not cause an object to change shape, but the properties of the environment immediately surrounding it can. Leather artifacts will change dimensionally if they are placed in very humid or very dry conditions, and excessive heat will cause the collagen fibres to shrink significantly. Feathers are made of a tough protein called keratin with the major breakdown mechanisms being fungi growth and the action of animals and insects. We have no way of knowing the past environments that all of the forty-five balls examined have been stored in. A ball displayed in a glass cabinet in direct sunlight will have been subjected to a much wider range of temperature and humidities than a ball kept in a desk drawer. When one considers the severe environmental possibilities, it is surprising that the condition and overall roundness of the balls are as good and consistent as they are. This can be taken as an indication that they are relatively robust items.

My conclusions are that ballmakers definitely aimed to make balls as round as possible! A ball made from three pieces of leather will never be as round as hand rolled or molded gutty. In my opinion the statements of 1869 and 1887 that feathery balls were “not perfectly round” and “rather oblong” are clearly valid, but they have been grossly exaggerated to the point that a myth has grown up and perpetuated to the present day. The fact that some extant balls, in supposedly mint condition, are considerably out of round has been taken as proof by some that this is how the makers intended them to be. What has been missed is that these balls have been exposed to a foreign substance – more on that in a future article! My investigations have shown that some well used balls are rounder than some in mint condition. The feathers were stuffed in to an amazing degree and the core is surprisingly solid – more on that later! The roundness is a result of two things: the dimensions to which the three leather pieces are cut and the internal properties of the hide. A small change in measuring and cutting has a large effect on the roundness of the final ball and so great care needs to be taken. It is likely that the three pieces of leather would’ve been cut from the same area of the hide to try and match the amount of stretchiness, but from experience I can say that certain parts of the hide are definitely not suitable! Any experienced ballmaker would be able to produce a good round ball but variations in size and weight are impossible to avoid given the nature of leather and this will be discussed in my next article.

Gavin Bottrell February 2025

References

1.     Allan Robertson, Golfer. His Life and Times. Alistair Beaton Adamson. Grant Books, 1985. Pp5.

2.     John F.Hotchkiss, “500 Years of Golf Balls”

3.     The Curios History of The Golf Ball, Mankind’s Most Fascinating Sphere. J.S.Martin. Horizon Press, New York, 1968.

4.     The Golf Collectibles Market. MBA Thesis, Aston Business School. G.Bottrell. 2003

5.     Antique Golf Ball Reference & Price Guide. Leo M.Kelly Jr. Old Chicago Golf Shop, 1993. 

6.     Reminiscences of Golf on St. Andrews Links by James Balfour, Edinburgh , David Douglas, 1887.

7.     A History of Golf in Britain, Various, Cassell & Co, 1952

8.     Golfing Curios and The Like, Harry B. Woods, Sherratt & Hughes. 1910

9.     Golf in Perth and Perthshire, Mr.Peter Baxter, 1899

10.  Golfing Reminiscences by An Old Hand, Henry Thomas Peter. 1890.

11.  How Far Did Feathery Golf Balls Actually Go?,  Gavin Bottrell. www.featherygolfball.com

12.  The Boy’s Book of Sports, Games, Exercises and Pursuits, Warne and Company pp.67.

13.  The Golfer’s Manual, A Keen Hand ( H.B. Farnie), 1857.

14. The Oldest Clubs, R.G.G Gowland, Privately Published 2011. pp 222.