The local golf course in my town is the Baldwin Golf Association, a nine-hole, 2833-yard sand greens remnant of the 1950s. Someone playing immediately before me left a treasure-trove of circa-1990 golf balls sprayed around the first hole of the club. (It’s a local custom to fire as many balls possible strewn randomly across the course, so that someone else can pick them up.) I was a well above-average player in 1990. Today, I don’t bother even handicapping myself. But the discovery of this golf-ball time machine took me back a bit.
One of my all-time favorite golf balls was the Titlist Tour 90 compression. It had a balata cover, offering the best feel one could accomplish for players who can work the ball a bit. I used to be one of those players, but I haven’t committed the time recently to make that happen again quite yet.
The balata cover used in the manufacture of these and many other popular balls of the era was derived from the sap of the Massaranduba (Manilkara bidentata) tree. These balls haven’t been made in quite some time, due to the more recent advances in Surlyn and other synthetic covers.
The diversity and wide range of uses for many tropical hardwoods is astounding. Medicines, latex, and many other raw materials are derived from responsibly harvested forests.
The earliest golf clubs were often produced with Hickory shafts. Persimmon was the wood of choice, back when they were making "wood" clubs. They were stiff, yet flexible. It was the best-suited shafting material for these earliest tools. With the industrial revolution came the advent of more predictable metals, and the consistency and mass-production capabilities of steel would later be supplanted with titanium- and graphite-alloyed creations.
None of this is very interesting if one can’t even properly strike the ball. I have a little work to do.
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