The Golf Ball – Golf Historical Society

It must have seemed like the beginning of the end. The forces of commerce and profit in America had been delivering a constant barrage of “improvements” designed to make golf easier to play. By 1902, the new American “patent” rubber balls from Haskell and Kempshall had come to Great Britain, and the professionals knew the “Bounding Billy,” as it was called, would change the way they played the game, not to mention the need to redesign their clubs, and cause an unacceptable attack on golf course agronomics and hole design.

Unlike in the second half of the 19th century, when the resilient, reusable and cheap, Gutta Percha “gutty” came along, the new rubber ball would create an entirely new platform for the ball to dominate the business of the traditional game, and would continue to affect every aspect of it for centuries. The golf industry had found its holy grail!

The Haskell Golf Ball Advert – March 1903

In early 1903, at the height of the new rubber ball explosion, Britain’s top golf professionals voted on whether to allow it to be used in competition.

“Bounding Billy” is not in favor with the English golf professionals. At the first annual meeting of the Professional Golfers’ Association a motion proposed by James Braid and seconded by C. R. Smith, that gutta percha balls only be used in tournaments held by the association was carried by 33 votes to 9.

Among those who spoke in favor of the “guttie” was Harry Vardon, who said that it affords a better test of the golfer’s skill than the rubber-cored ball. With the latter a player has two chances. If he tops his ball instead of lofting it, the ball may yet reach the green.

Though the decision applies only to professional events held by the association, it is believed that the members of the committee on rules of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews hold the same sentiments.

Of course it has been asserted that the manufacturers of the gutta percha ball influenced the conclusion reached by the professional golfers, and also, of course, this has been strenuously denied. Such things are always said and always denied.
(March 1903, Western Field, On the Links by Arthur Inkersley)

The Go lf Ball

Dr Bull : “You boys, Haskell and Kempshall are much too lively.” (G.I., Sept 05, 1902)

By 1902, golf was changing. The new rubber-filled Haskell and Kempshall golf balls were replacing the long-used, and loved, gutta-percha balls. The old gutta was shorter on the carry, but more controllable. The new balls were known as “bounding Billies,” because they bounced and ran through bunkers and hazards with nothing able to stop them. Amateur champion Walter J. Travis actually drove a Haskell 382 yards on the Garden City links in January 1903.

In Southern California, where long dry summers meant hard-pan fairways, summer golf nearly ceased to be when players opted for the new longer-distance rubber balls.

At the Los Angeles Country Club, at Pico and Western boulevards, the club’s bowling alley and ping pong tables replaced summer golf until irrigation arrived about ten years later.

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Here is a short piece from Mr. J. L. Low, published in the Athletic News (UK), Summer 1902, about the impact of the Transatlantic Bomber:

“The mind of the American man is exceedingly cunning, and he has devised a ball which makes it easier for the ordinary mortal to go round a golf course in a low score.

Let us admit this fact, and say, ‘We acknowledge that your ball is easier to play with than a golf ball, but you need not make any more, as we don’t wish the game made easier, our links being laid out to test the strength and skill of a golfer playing with a ball made out of certain recognized material.’

Or there is another course open to us, and that is to counteract this unfortunate inventive power of making the game easy by making the courses longer and more difficult. On courses which are at present of good length the holes would need to be lengthened by about thirty yards in order to give good driving its former advantage ; and there are other ways of making the rubber ball tremble within its skin.

But of the two ways of escaping the curse of these new balls and restoring the game to its old position as one of the most difficult of games, the former seems the more simple and less expensive ; the cost of altering our courses is, in fact, too great to contemplate.”

“In the meantime it cannot too extensively be advertised that scores made with patent balls are only equal to scores made with gutta balls from ‘short tees.'”

The Go lf Ball

Category: The Golf Ball

British P.G.A. rejects “Bounding Billy,” the beginning of the end. (1903)

Golf Balls of the 20th Century: The Transatlantic Bomber