It is remarkable, when one considers the vast number of scientific men who play golf, how little attention has been directed by them to the form and make of the golf ball. Many golfers are under the impression that the golf ball which is now used represents the limit of man's inventive genius. Probably the leading maker of the best feather ball in the days before the gutta-percha ball was known would have thought the same. As a matter of ascertained fact the vast majority of golf balls which are made to-day are imperfect in a variety of ways. There can be no doubt whatever that the ball which is marked by what are commonly called pimples, or bramble marking, is a most imperfect production.

If one were to suggest to a billiard player that it would improve the run of the balls if they were covered with little excrescences similar to those which are on many golf balls, he would be pitied or maltreated, yet Mid-Surrey greens are not many removes from a billiard table, and putting is quite half the game of golf, as I think has been remarked by a great number of people, but is nevertheless not sufficiently considered by golfers, especially in the matter of choosing golf balls.

It is not necessary, in considering the question of the golf ball, to bore people, as is usually done, with the history of the evolution of the golf ball, from the time when prehistoric men used a knuckle bone or something like that, right down through the feather ball period up to the present time. It will not be necessary for me to go back any further than the period of the gutta-percha ball. Most golfers will remember that the guttie was not a perfectly smooth ball; it was marked with grooved lines running round it. These crossed each other at various angles, producing, generally speaking, squares, although, naturally, some of the markings, where the lines did not cross at right angles, were irregular, but the principle of the marking was by indentation.

The bramble marking, or marking by excrescence, is an idea which has obtained a hold more recently, and it is certain, from a practical and scientific point of view, that it is a very imperfect marking.

It is a curious thing that in golf, where a very great amount of accuracy is demanded, particularly when one is playing a short put on a fiery green, the ball should be, so far as I am aware, the only ball which is deliberately constructed on principles which if applied to a billiard ball would make the ball what billiard players call "foul," that is, a ball which runs untruly.

It is unquestionable that sufficient thought has not been given to this matter. Very few people understand that it is practically impossible to place a ball with bramble markings on a perfectly true surface so that it will remain in the exact place where it was put, even if it were deposited on this spot by mechanical means. It is not hard to understand that this is natural when we remember that a golf ball which is marked by the excrescences called pimples or brambles comes to rest on a tripod of excrescences, and indeed it sometimes requires to find a base of four of these excrescences before it settles down.

Any thinking golfer will be able to understand very easily that this must make for instability, and he will see clearly what it means when a ball is rolling very slowly. Let us imagine, for instance, that a golfer is playing an approach put of twenty yards. It is evident that while the main force of the blow is behind the ball it will enable it to overcome much of the untrueness of the ball, but it is equally apparent that as the force is dying away at the critical time when one wishes the ball to run truly on its course to the hole, it is most prone to waver. It is at times like this that the golfer blames the "beastly green," whereas if he knew as much as he should about the make of a golf ball he would know that he had only himself to thank for playing with such an extremely imperfect thing as the golf ball which is marked by excrescences.

It is of course clear that on a putting-green the ball with excrescences sinks into the turf, and whilst it is running with any considerable force behind it, it makes for itself what may be termed a trough to run in, which is equivalent in depth practically to the hole which the ball would make when lying at rest on the green. This is the only thing which saves the ball marked with excrescences from being a much worse failure than it is. It is, however, when one comes to put with it over a hard, keen, or bare green that its wonderful imperfection is shown.

Many golfers, on account of the fact that an ordinary putting-green does assist this imperfect ball to this extent, are inclined to maintain that the ball is sufficient for the needs of golf. They forget, of course, that a ball with these excrescences must necessarily be more inaccurate off the face of the putter than would be a ball marked by indentation, for when a ball is marked by indentation, either of the dimple pattern, which has come into vogue more recently, or of the lines which were used in the old days, it undoubtedly will run more truly than if marked by excrescences, for the reason that the indentation is bridged in such a manner that it is not felt to the same extent as is an excrescence.

I may illustrate this by applying the marking of an old guttie to a billiard ball. Let us consider for a moment that the billiard ball has been marked by having lines sawn in it similar to those on a gutta-percha ball; these lines would not affect the trueness of the running of a billiard ball to a very great extent. But let us, on the other hand, imagine that instead of lines being sunk in the ball, these lines had been put in a network on the ball, so that they were raised from the surface of the billiard ball. It is obvious that such a ball would be absolutely impossible, and it would be an extremely foul-running ball.

There is another point to be considered in connection with this matter of marking by indentation or by excrescences. It would be almost a matter of impossibility to stand a ball marked by excrescences so that it balanced on the point of one of the pimples. On the other hand it would be perfectly natural for a ball marked by a dimple of corresponding diameter to the base of the pimple, to come to rest on the "ring" formed by that dimple. We have already seen that the ball marked by excrescences requires three or four of those excrescences to rest on before it becomes stationary. Roughly, therefore, the instability of the ball marked by excrescences is at least three times as great as that of the ball marked by indentation, and if we contrast the ball marked by excrescences with the ball marked by the old gutta-percha marking, the difference would probably be very much greater against the bramble marking.

We have already seen that the putting-green assists, to a certain extent, to make up for the defects of the ball with bramble marking, but it must not be forgotten that although the putting-green does this, the greater tendency to instability is there the whole time, and must put the golfer who uses the bramble-marked ball at a disadvantage.

Putting, especially near the hole, is a very delicate operation, and it is apparent that in many cases the blow will be delivered on the point of one of these excrescences. It is equally apparent that in many cases that excrescence will not be in such a line with regard to the putter that the force of the blow will pass clean through the centre thereof, and also through the centre of the ball's mass in a line to the hole. When it does not do this it is certain that there is an element of inaccuracy introduced into the put (particularly the short put) which the wise golfer will not have in his stroke, for not only is the ball with excrescences more inaccurate off the face of the putter, but it is, particularly for short puts and on keen greens, much more inaccurate in its run than is the ball which is marked by indentations.

This question of hitting one of the pimples of the golf ball might be considered to be theoretical, but it is a matter of the most absolutely practical golf, and I have seen the force of it exemplified not only in golf, but in lawn-tennis. I must give here a very interesting illustration of the point which I am making.

Some time ago a lawn-tennis racket was produced which had a knot at the intersection of the strings. The idea of this knot was that it would enable the racket to get a better grip on the ball, and so to produce a much greater spin. This, to a certain extent, was correct. There was no doubt that the racket did get a very good grip on the ball, although personally, as a matter of practical lawn-tennis, I never regarded the invention very seriously; but it was useful in emphasising the point which I am now making with regard to the marking by excrescences of the golf ball. It was found that when one attempted to play delicate volleys with this racket that it was impossible to regulate the direction, for the simple reason that the ball, on many occasions, was struck by one of the knots on the racket, and this frequently spoilt the direction of the stroke.

What happened with that racket and the lawn-tennis ball is what is happening every day on hundreds of greens with the golf balls which are marked by excrescences, and the golfer who is wise will have nothing whatever to do with any ball which is marked otherwise than by indentations.

It was in the year 1908 that I first put forward these ideas in an article in The Evening Standard and St. James's Gazette. I had written many articles which were of much greater importance to the game from the scientific point of view, but this particular article eclipsed them all in interest. I had started the idea that the golf ball should be made much smoother than it was at that time, and for four months the controversy as to the merits of the rough ball or the smoother raged. I caused the leading manufacturers of golf balls to be interviewed. The manager of Messrs. A. G. Spalding & Bros., the well-known manufacturers, gave it as his opinion that the idea was perfectly ridiculous. He was quite convinced that the rough ball was the better ball. The manager of another company was of opinion that the smoother ball would not drive straight. Many of them traced this to the fact that a smooth ball would not fly straight, but we were not concerned with the question as to whether the smooth ball would fly straight or not; golfers, generally, are well aware of the fact, and even in 1908 were well aware of the fact, that a perfectly smooth ball will not fly straight. The whole point of the discussion was to ascertain if it would not be better to have a much smoother ball than that with the bramble marking.

I was interested in having the opinion of the golf ball manufacturers, for I have never thought that they have dealt with the matter in a scientific manner. It seemed to me that the evolution of the marking of the golf ball had been entirely haphazard, and it is, I believe, still in the same condition, but it certainly shows some signs of improving.

In order to put the matter beyond doubt I asked Mr. Rupert Ayres, of the famous firm of F. H. Ayres, Ltd., to have made for me a golf ball with an extremely fine marking; in fact I gave instructions for the ball to be marked with what I considered the least possible indentations which were likely to be serviceable. Mr. Ayres took a very great amount of trouble in connection with this matter, and he produced for me a ball similar, in all respects, to that which I wanted, with the slight exception that the marking was finer than I had desired. The result was that when the ball was painted the interstices were filled up to a very considerable extent, so much so indeed that I doubted if the ball was sufficiently marked to ensure its flying correctly. I tried this ball at Hanger Hill, both personally and by submitting it to a considerable number of drives by George Duncan, and it always gave unsatisfactory results—indeed its flight was so remarkable that it might well have been christened "the butterfly." It zigzagged and soared and ducked in a most remarkable, and to a very great extent, inexplicable manner.

I knew, of course, that what I had to do was to increase the indentations a little in depth, for my object was to obtain the mean between no marking whatever and the ridiculously exaggerated marking by excrescences which is now so common, and my experiments were not in the direction of obtaining any marking whatever by excrescences, for I was following on the lines which were accidentally discovered by those who found that the old feather balls, and particularly the gutta-percha balls, flew better after they had been indented by the golf clubs. My idea, therefore, was, starting from the least possible indentation, to proceed by marking the ball more deeply and yet more deeply until I found that it would fly as accurately as a ball marked by excrescences.

Mr. Ayres helped me in my experiments with remarkable patience and ability. I found that there are a hundred and one different markings, all of which are practically of equal service in so far as regards affecting the flight of the ball, but in every case I came to the conclusion that the marking by indentation is the best. This led me to get Mr. Ayres to produce for me a ball which he ultimately put on the market under my name, which was marked in identically the same manner as the old guttie. I believe "The Vaile" was the first rubber-cored ball with the old guttie marking to be placed on the market, and this marking was found to be satisfactory in every respect. The ball, as indeed one might imagine, both flew and ran perfectly, but it was met by golfers with a strange objection. They said it was too much like the old guttie. Personally, I did not care what they said about it. I had not caused the ball to be made from any commercial interest I had in the matter.

It had been stated that a ball marked like this would not be so good for golf as a ball marked with excrescences. I had proved beyond a shadow of doubt that the ball was better for golf than the ball which was marked by excrescences, and I was content to leave it at that, although as a matter of fact later on Messrs. Ayres did produce for me a ball with a more distinctive marking which gave us equally good results in so far as regards flight and run, but which I did not like nearly so well as the old guttie marking.

At the time this ball was produced I stated emphatically that I believed that the result of the agitation and discussion would be to knock the pimples off the golf ball. This statement was, of course, ridiculed by the makers of golf balls, and quite wisely too, for they had tens of thousands of pimply golf balls which they had to dispose of, and it was not their business to agree with my ideas of altering the make of the golf ball until they had disposed of their stock. They have, however, now no prejudice whatever in the matter, and the leading manufacturers both here and in America are pushing balls which are marked by indentation. They certainly were a long time after my manufacturers in realising the importance of the principle, but they are now endeavouring to make up for lost time. One firm, Messrs. A. G. Spalding & Bros., is pushing three balls as their leading lines. These are the Glory Dimple, the Midget Dimple, and the Domino Dimple. All these balls are what are now called dimple balls, and they meet with great favour in many quarters, although there are still a number of golfers who swear by the bramble-marking.

During the course of this long controversy I suggested that it would be a good idea if the balls which were marked by excrescences and those which were marked by indentations were subjected to a test by being mechanically propelled. Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey, the famous wild-fowler and author of The Projectile Throwing Engines of the Ancients, wrote to me and very kindly volunteered to carry out the experiment if I would send him the balls I wished him to test. I naturally accepted his very kind offer, and sent him a variety of golf balls to be tested. Sir Ralph is the possessor of some very remarkable catapults built on the principles of the old Roman engines of war, and with these he conducted a series of experiments, which were so interesting that they deserve to be permanently recorded for the benefit of future generations. His conclusions were published in two articles which occupied about three columns of The Times, and they are of such an instructive nature that I propose to quote somewhat fully from them.

Sir Ralph showed quite clearly that in a very great number of cases the centre of gravity of the ball is untrue. Quite a number of golfers would think that it is not a matter of very great importance if the centre of gravity of a golf ball is untrue. Anyone who thinks this may speedily undeceive himself by a small experiment suggested by Sir Ralph. Let him cut a hole in the side of a golf ball, insert a piece of lead or half a dozen shot and fill the hole up with wax or soap and then put with that ball. He will be astonished to find what a peculiar course it takes.

Of course, not many golf balls are loaded like this, but it is beyond any doubt whatever that in many cases the gutta-percha covering of the rubber-core is of very uneven thickness. This in itself and quite apart from the defect of marking by excrescences which I have already referred to, is sufficient to account for the very bad running of many golf balls.

I may say, too, that I believe this untrueness of the centre of gravity is responsible for the double swerve which one frequently sees in a truly hit golf ball. A swerve which is obtained from the application of spin to the golf ball, almost invariably is continuous and in the one direction, but I have frequently seen well-hit drives by the most famous players swerve to the right, back again to the left and resume their original course. This has happened with such perfect regularity in many cases that there must unquestionably be a definite reason for it, apart from rotation applied by contact with the club, and the only explanation which I can give of it in any way at all is that it is caused by an untrue centre.

The shape, resiliency, and centre of gravity of the golf ball are of vital importance to the player, but the golfer accepts all these matters with a blind faith which is touching in the extreme. A golfer should not accept from a golf ball manufacturer a ball which is not truly spherical, or one which does not fly truly when truly hit, but as a matter of fact almost fifty per cent of the golf balls supplied by the leading makers come within this category. One may take fifty golf balls of any specific sort, and test these for shape, centre of gravity, and weight, and it is an even chance that twenty-five of them will be quite different from the other twenty-five.

It is very easy indeed to test the rubber-cored balls as regards the correctness of their centre of gravity. Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey found that none of the rubber-cored balls was correct as to its centre of gravity, though some were much more incorrect than others, and he found that not one of them was truly spherical in shape. I may say that in a large number of cases I have verified his experiments. Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey's method of testing them for correctness of centre of gravity is so simple that I may give it here for the benefit of any player who desires to see that he is getting a ball which will serve him truly in so far as regards this important particular.

Sir Ralph placed the ball which he desired to test in a basin of water and waited until it came to rest. When the ball had come to rest, there was naturally a small portion of it protruding from the water. Sir Ralph marked the centre of this spot with a pencil dot and he found that however carelessly he put the same ball into the water, however much it was rolled about, that the portion of the ball marked with the pencil dot always came upwards out of the water again, and that the actual spot with the pencil mark on it always came to exactly the same place. It was evident from this that the centre of gravity of the balls tested in this manner was considerably untrue.

Sir Ralph found, as might be expected, that the old guttie ball was much truer as regards its centre of gravity than the rubber-cored balls. He tested the gutta-percha ball and the miniature ball which would not float in plain water, in a solution of salt and water.

The experiments which he conducted in connection with these balls were really quite exhaustive. He found that with some of the balls, especially the smaller ones, the dot appeared in two seconds, while some of the others took from four to six seconds to come upward. He arrived at a comparative idea of the error in centre of gravity by placing the dot downwards in the water, and then noting with a stop-watch the time occupied by it in appearing out of the water on top of the ball. He thus took the time in each case from the moment of release to the moment that the pencil dot again came uppermost, and by these means he obtained as accurately as he could with a stop-watch the comparative error of one ball with another in regard to its centre of gravity.

The testing of the balls for true spherical shape was, of course, easy, and was done by means of callipers. It can be done either by callipers or by a parallel vice which may be opened just wide enough to allow a ball to be passed between its jaws. If one has not a vice or callipers available, it is, of course, easy to cut a circle in a piece of cardboard and gradually increase the size of the circle until a ball will just get through. The circle, of course, must be made truly, but this can easily be done by a pin and a string if compasses are not available.

Of course, it would be advisable in testing a golf ball through a ring such as this to obtain in the first case a ball which is as near a true sphere as any rubber-cored ball can be. This may be done by fixing any two objects in a similar position to that suggested for the jaws of a vice, as for instance the opening of a drawer. One may open a drawer and fix the drawer firmly so that the ball can just pass in at the opening. Once this is done, it is almost as effectual as either callipers or the jaws of a vice.

Sir Ralph found that the gutties were as near true spheres as possible, and also that these balls showed very slight error in centre of gravity. This, of course, from the solidity of the matter and their original formation in the mould might naturally have been expected, for in the nature of the modern ball it stands to reason that its centre of gravity could never be so consistent as that of a ball which is made entirely in the one piece as was the old gutta-percha ball.

Sir Ralph has some remarkable projectile engines which gave him exceptional facilities for testing the flight of the golf balls which I sent him. He has one engine which weighs about two tons and is capable of casting a stone ball of twelve pounds a distance of a quarter of a mile. The catapult which he used for the purpose is a small reproduction of this big engine. His small model of this engine weighs about forty pounds and will pitch a golf ball from 180 to 200 yards, the distance of course depending upon the amount of tension used and the angle of elevation.

The power of the engine is obtained from twisted cord, and the arm of the machine used by Sir Ralph is two feet eight inches long, and is provided with a cup at its upper end to hold the ball. It is so arranged that the balls can be thrown any intermediate distance required up to 200 yards, and at any elevation. Sir Ralph conducted experiments with balls thrown by the catapult, and also with balls hit away by it in a manner similar to a golf club, and, as might be expected, no spin whatever was imparted to the ball. It was thrown in a straight line every time with unvarying accuracy, and there was not the slightest sign whatever of slice, pull, or cut. This, of course, is exactly what one who knows the principle of the catapult would expect.

Sir Ralph found, however, that the accuracy of flight of the ball was very remarkable, and he gives as an instance the fact that a ball which had been marked as having a particularly accurate flight was pitched twenty times in succession within a few feet of a stick stuck in the ground 180 yards from the machine.

It is interesting to note the weights of the balls used in these experiments. They varied from 22 drachms to 23 drachms avoirdupois, and their diameters from 53 to 54 thirty-seconds of an inch. The guttie ball used by Sir Ralph weighed 24½ drachms, and one of the miniature balls 24 drachms 6 grains. Sir Ralph threw a dozen balls of various makes from his small engine at a mark 160 yards distant, and he threw each ball twenty times before another was tried. He employed a fore-caddie to mark the indentations each ball made where it fell. A peg was put in at the spot where each ball landed, and these distances were all subsequently measured, and the records kept for purposes of comparison.

After this had been done with one ball the same was done with another, and it is almost unnecessary to say that the angle of elevation and the force used in each case was the same. Sir Ralph found that in propelling the balls with the wind there was very little difference in the length of carry or the steadiness of the flight, though, as might have been expected, the guttie beat all of them in distance, being six times in its first series of twenty throws a few yards farther than the longest carry made by any of the other balls. This, of course, was quite natural, for the old guttie was heavier, harder, a more correct sphere and more correctly marked than the ball which is now in common use. Therefore it was quite reasonable to expect that it would go farther when propelled from the catapult. It is, of course, just as easy to understand that this superiority would not exist when the ball was struck with a golf club, for then the question of resiliency comes into the matter.

It is interesting to note that Sir Ralph found that the miniature golf ball more nearly approximated to the guttie than to the rubber-cored balls. The miniature being harder and heavier than the other rubber-cores, when thrown by the engine gave the longest flight of all the rubber-cores, although it did not get so far as the guttie. Its superiority, however, when struck from the engine in a manner as nearly as possible resembling the blow with a golf club, was non-existent, and its carry was then found to be the shortest of all the rubber-cores, and the guttie ball was, when hit away by the machine, shorter yet than the miniature golf ball.

Sir Ralph found, as I had confidently asserted would be the case, that against the wind the balls with the roughest markings always carried the shortest distance, and that they tended to rise too much in their flight. This was most apparent at about two-thirds of the carry. Sir Ralph found that there was a distinct difference in this matter of soaring between the very roughly marked balls and those which were a little less so. He proved to demonstration the fact which I had confidently maintained, that the less roughly marked balls, owing to the small amount of air friction which they set up, and naturally in consequence thereof, their lower parabola, always carried farther against the wind.

I have referred elsewhere to Harry Vardon's remark about not attempting to regulate the flight of the ball in a cross wind, or indeed, for the matter of that, in any other wind by applying spin to it. Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey's experiment put this matter beyond a shadow of doubt, so that we may be absolutely certain that the idea of trying to slice against a wind to get a straight ball, or to pull into a wind to get an extra run, is for ninety-five per cent of players not practical golf. Sir Ralph found that with a fresh side wind from the left, all the balls, except the guttie, landed from eight to twelve yards to the right of the mark at a range of 130 yards. He states emphatically that in this case it was clearly shown that the more roughly marked balls consistently showed the greatest deviation from the correct line of flight. We have, however, gained a very strong argument in favour of the ball with the less pronounced marking.

Sir Ralph also discovered another thing which is of very great importance indeed to the practical golfer, but a thing which is not considered in the slightest degree by one golfer in ten thousand, and that is that the balls which were most untrue in regard to their centre of gravity, not only always dropped the farthest to the right, that is, were most affected by the cross wind, but that they also ran at a more acute angle in the same direction after contact with the ground. Thus we see that in 130 yards the most roughly-marked ball in a cross wind is deflected twelve yards. We see also that this ball was the one which was most incorrect as regards its centre of gravity. We therefore have a specimen of the worst ball which could be used for this purpose being carried twelve yards off its line, and we may reasonably take this to be the extreme of error for that distance.

It is easy to understand when we consider such an illustration as this what a tremendous handicap the golfer is suffering from when he uses the ball which allows the wind to get such a grip of it as the bramble-marked ball does, and moreover one with a centre of gravity which is so bad that it assists the work of the wind in carrying the ball away as it does, and not only assists the wind to this extent, but even carries its vices to the extent of still further fighting against the player by exaggerating its error when it lands by running away from the line.

These are all bad enough, but we must remember that there is also to be considered the error which is unquestionably a matter to be reckoned with, which inevitably takes place when the ball marked by excrescences is struck by a club.

I had sent Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey the ball which I had had made for experimental purposes with very slight marking, and he was good enough to experiment with this for me. He says of it: "This ball was quite smooth, as smooth indeed as a billiard ball, the idea being that having no markings on its outside it would not present so frictional a surface to the air in its flight, as a ball with markings, and that being without this it would also be very accurate from the putter. I tried this smooth ball from the engine, and it 'ducked' every time in an extraordinary manner, its length of carry being seldom more than eighty yards."

Sir Ralph is most accurate, generally speaking, but he is in error by stating that this ball is as smooth as a billiard ball. The ball which I sent Sir Ralph was called by me "The Ruff," merely as a distinctive name, for it was the nearest approach to a perfectly smooth ball that I could make. It is evident from Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey's description of it that it is, as compared with the golf balls now in use, very smooth, but it is pitted all over with remarkably small indentations so that it appears to be chased, but, as I explained, the paint to a certain extent covered up the interstices so as to prevent the ball giving me the test which I expected to get from it. It is, however, not accurate to say that this ball is perfectly smooth.

It is obvious that from this I was trying to work to the mean which I felt perfectly certain existed between the old golf ball, whose erratic flight was well known, and the modern golf ball with its exaggerated marking.

Sir Ralph thought that the form of this ball might not, for some unknown reason, suit a projectile engine. He continues:

... and as I could not drive it further than about eighty yards with a golf club, I engaged the well-known professional, Edward Ray, to play a round of the green with this ball at Ganton. As Ray is an exceptionally long and accurate player with driver and cleek I felt the ball would have a fair chance of going, if it could go. From the first tee the ball did not carry a hundred yards, though, to all appearances, struck clean and hard. I thought that for once in a way Ray had missed his drive, but as the same thing occurred from every tee and through the green for the next six holes, there was no disputing that a smooth ball was quite useless for golf.

I then proceeded to nick the ball slightly with the point of a knife, spacing the small raised nicks about one-third of an inch apart, the ball being still a very smooth one in comparison to any of the usual kinds. After this slight alteration the ball flew splendidly, whether off wood or iron clubs, neither too high nor too low, but quite straight, and with the very slight rise towards the end of its carry that is the essence of perfect flight in a golf ball, some of the carries when measured from the tee being well over two hundred yards.

Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey continues that when he returned home he shot this ball from the small engine, and it then several times out-distanced the best records made by any of the balls previously tested. After this he chipped up many more little raised nicks on the same smooth ball as a further experiment, but he then found that this not only reduced its length of flight by several yards, but also caused it to soar too much upwards when projected against a head wind as is the case with the ordinary rough-marked golf ball.

It will be seen here that Sir Ralph continued with the ball sent by me to him, the experiment, which I had started, as it was my intention to proceed from a ball as nearly as could be, smooth, towards the present exaggerated ball, by the least possible steps, so that the moment that I had arrived at a ball so marked that it would not give me any extra carry, I should desist at once.

Sir Ralph's summing up is as follows. He says: "From such practical tests it is evident that the surface of a golf ball is far too rough, and that it would fly with more accuracy and farther, especially with a head or a side wind, had it much less numerous and prominent markings on its cover." This is exactly what I contended for in my original article on the subject, and it is exactly what has to be realised by the makers of the golf ball of the future. Many of the balls which are now being produced with the dimple marking are moving in the right direction, but they still have the grave errors of bad centre of gravity and excessive marking. When these two matters have been adjusted we shall have a very much better ball.

It will be interesting now to refer to the results which Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey obtained when he fitted his catapult with an arm provided with an enlarged head similar in shape to the head of a golf driver. Sir Ralph says:

This striking arm hit the ball away just as it is hit by a golf club. The ball I suspended by gossamer silk from the projecting beam of a little gallows fixed over the engine, and so positioned that the enlarged upper end of the arm struck the ball fair and true and with its full force and at the same angle every time.

I was not present when Sir Ralph made these experiments. He, however, was kind enough to send me a copy of his most interesting work entitled The Projectile Throwing Engines of the Ancients. This book gives many illustrations of the catapults used by the Romans and others.

I find it somewhat difficult to follow Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey when he says: "This striking arm hit the ball away just as it is hit by a golf club," for it seems to me that as the ball was suspended above the striking face of the club which was fixed to the upper end of the arm, that the arc described by the arm of the catapult would be exactly opposite to that described by the head of the golf club, and it is of course conceivable that this would in some way affect the carry of golf balls struck by the machine in this manner.

I need not, however, go into that here, for whatever the results obtained by Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey were each ball was hit in exactly the same manner, and therefore we have, in so far as regards distance and the effect of the side wind, fairly accurate comparative tests. Sir Ralph says: "Though I could not obtain the same length of carry by making the engine strike the ball as I could when the ball was thrown by it—not by about fifteen yards—yet the individual results in distance and in deviation with a side wind exactly corresponded with the behaviour of the various balls when they were thrown and when carries of from 180 to 200 yards were obtained from them."

Sir Ralph found that in this experiment the carry of the guttie was invariably about eighteen yards shorter than that of the ordinary rubber-cored balls. He therefore carried out an interesting experiment by fixing a pad of rubber on the face of the head of the arm, and the guttie, when struck by this, travelled as far as any of the balls. He found, as I have previously indicated, that of the rubber-cored balls the small one carried the shortest distance when struck by the engine, and he found also that its length of flight was not increased by using the rubber pad. This, of course, is what we might have expected.

There is one very interesting matter which Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey notes. He says: "Another curious thing, the ball with the most untrue centre of gravity usually made one, and occasionally even two, swerves in the air when hit against the wind, though this eccentricity in its line of flight was less noticeable when it was thrown from the engine." This is a very interesting statement to anyone who devotes attention to the flight of the ball, and it goes very far indeed to confirm my own impression that the double swerve of the golf ball which I have noticed so frequently, is produced by defective centre of gravity.

PLATE XIV.

These experiments are of very great value, and should be carefully noted by golf ball makers, but Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey was not content with testing the golf balls for their flight. After having put in several days doing this, and having fired fully 500 shots, he continued his experiments with these balls with the object of ascertaining their relative merits on the putting-green. He says:

I obtained a piece of lead three-quarters of an inch thick, two inches wide, and three feet long, in which I cut a straight and smooth groove one inch wide. One end of this piece of lead I rested on the cushion at the baulk end of a billiard table, and directed its other end towards the spot on which the red ball is placed in the game of billiards. The forward end of the grooved lead I tapered off so that a ball ran evenly and smoothly from the groove on to the table without any drop or deviation as it left the piece of lead, which from its weight, when once set, could not change its position. I now placed a thimble on the spot at the far end of the table and rolled an accurately-turned wooden ball the same size as a golf ball down the sloping groove. After a little adjustment of the lead piece its line of fire was correct, and I was able to knock the thimble off the spot fifty times in succession. The ball travelled with sufficient speed just to reach the cushion beyond the thimble when the latter was moved aside, and the shot at the thimble nicely represented a slow put of eight feet in length.

This is a most interesting way of testing the golf ball. I may say that I have myself carried out experiments on similar lines, and that the results which I obtained practically confirm the accuracy of those which Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey got. He found that on testing various golf balls the results were widely different. He tried each ball several times in a series of twenty tries at the thimble. He found that individually they seldom hit it more than three or four times in a series, and that some of the balls, particularly those which he had found to be incorrect so far as regards their centre of gravity, rolled away from the thimble as much as two feet to the right or left, and that they sometimes actually went into the corner pockets of the table. This would seem to be incredible, but I can vouch for the accuracy of Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey's statements.

It is an amazing thing to think of, but it is perfectly true, that the modern golf ball is so badly constructed that in a straight roll down the middle of the table such as that described by Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey, the ball will absolutely roll as far off the line as the corner pockets, and indeed sometimes farther even than this. That is what the golfer has to contend with when he tries to put with a bramble ball on a golf green, but, of course, as he does not know it, he blames himself for an off day, or the green for being "beastly," but he never by any chance whatever gives a thought to his horribly defective golf ball.

Sir Ralph says that the guttie was a notable exception to the inaccuracy of the rubber cores. He found that in its different series of twenty tries it often struck the thimble from fourteen to fifteen times, and when it missed was usually within an inch of the mark. This shows clearly the wonderful difference which I have already emphasised between marking by indentation and marking by excrescence. Sir Ralph also emphasises a point to which I had already directed attention as to the ball marked by excrescences running truly when hit hard. It is when the ball has no great propulsive force behind it that its inherent vice is most surely shown. Sir Ralph says:

Any of the balls if played fairly hard from a cue could be made to strike the thimble every time; but then such a hard hit ball would go far beyond the hole in golf, and probably overrun the putting green! The smooth billiard-table cloth may be taken to represent the hard, bare and fast putting green of a dry summer.

That is a very fair comparison, with the exception that the hard, bare and fast putting-green of a dry summer would present infinitely greater inaccuracies to the already sufficiently inaccurate golf ball than would the billiard table. Let the unthinking golfer ruminate a little on this subject, and the day is not far distant when we shall never see such a thing as an excrescence on a golf ball.

Sir Ralph was very ingenious and thorough in his experiments. He desired to obtain the nearest possible approximation which he could to a natural putting-green, so he stretched a strip of rough green baize on the billiard table and tested the balls on this. He made a chalk mark on which to place the thimble, and its distance from the lead gutter was the same as in his other experiments. He then found that the balls, with the exception of those which had been marked as having their centre of gravity much out of place, ran with far greater accuracy. Most of them hit the thimble from eight to ten times in their individual series of twenty shots, but the guttie was, as usual, an easy winner. Sir Ralph found that on the billiard table if the balls were played fairly hard from a cue, although too hard for golf, the thimble could be knocked over every time.

I consider that these experiments prove beyond a shadow of doubt, as I personally never doubted, that the ordinary bramble-marked golf ball will not run truly unless it has a considerable amount of force behind it, and that for short puts, and particularly on anything like a fast green, it is a most treacherous ball. Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey says:

All this goes to prove that, although a ball may be of inaccurate make, it keeps its line to near the end of its course when hit hard along the ground, as for instance, in a long running up approach to the hole from the edge of a putting green. It is also clear that a ball with an incorrect centre of gravity will very seldom run true off the putter if the ground is hard, fast and smooth and the distance it is required to travel is only a few feet. For this reason manufacturers should consider the accuracy of a ball for short puts—accuracy that can only be gained by making it a perfect sphere with its centre of gravity in the exact centre of the ball; for short puts must lose many more matches than short drives.

As Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey truly says, with a badly balanced ball the easiest of short puts may fail, especially on a downward slope, though the player rarely suspects that his ball and not his skill is to blame.

It is not, as I have already pointed out, only the question of the badly balanced ball which is of such vital importance in short puts, but it is the question of the untrue running of the ball marked by excrescences; also there is the equally important matter, which I have referred to, of the untrueness of the ball marked by excrescences in coming off the face of the putter. I am firmly convinced that there is no more perfect marking for a golf ball than that used for the old guttie ball, that is a marking by indented lines, but even here I believe that equally good results, both in flight and run, would be obtained if the gutta-percha ball were marked in a similar manner but with fewer lines.

Some of Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey's conclusions are important. He suggests that a golfer should carefully test a ball before using it in an important match, and this is, unquestionably, from a scientific point of view, a very sound and good suggestion. I have already indicated his method of testing a ball for its centre of gravity, and I have shown how the ball may be tested for its spherical shape. There is no necessity to apply any test whatever to the ball in so far as regards its marking. There is one maxim with regard to that—avoid anything in the shape of a golf ball marked by excrescences.

Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey's advice to golfers with regard to the balls need not be given here in full, valuable as I believe it to be in the main. But there is one matter which is worth repeating. He says:

Select a ball with as smooth a cover as you can find, for though all golf balls require to be roughened in order to steady their flight, those most deeply scored travel the shortest distance, and are most affected by a head or side wind.

This is very sound and important advice, and it should receive the attention not only of golfers, but of the golf ball manufacturers, for even those balls which are now marked by indentation are, in my opinion, too freely marked, and I am inclined to think that the dimples on the golf balls which are so marked, are, if anything, too large and too frequent. I think it is extremely probable that the balls which are so marked would fly and run better than they do now if they were marked by lines as the old guttie was marked, but with fewer of these lines. Probably if they were marked with one-third of the number of lines which were used on the old guttie, we should have a perfect flying and running ball.

Before closing this chapter on the make of the golf ball, it will be interesting to refer once again to the results obtained by Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey when throwing the smooth ball from his machine and also when having it driven by Edward Ray. He obtained results similar in all respects to those which George Duncan and I obtained when trying "The Ruff." It is very curious indeed that so far there have not been any definite scientific experiments made to show exactly where the serviceable degree of roughness ends and the prejudicial begins, though much has certainly been done since I started the controversy about the relative merits of a smoother ball.

Some golf ball makers have gone so far as to produce a dimple ball with a small pimple in the dimple. This, in effect, reduced the dimple to a ring, and these balls have been found to fly and run very well, but all that has been so far done has been a matter of experiment, of rule of thumb work. I do not think that there is a firm of golf ball makers in England which is in possession of a proper mechanical driver. We are assured that at least one firm in America is in possession of such a machine, but so far as I am aware there is no efficient machine of such a nature in England. This is very remarkable, as with such a machine a firm of golf ball manufacturers could obtain results which would probably give them a big advantage over their competitors.

I was quite astonished to see it stated by a firm of golf ball makers the other day that, although they were making a ball marked by indentations, they had come to the conclusion after much experimenting that the bramble pattern was the best for all-round excellence. In the face of the remarkably conclusive experiments conducted by Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey, whose results I may say bore out up to the hilt everything which I had said about the defective construction of the golf ball, I should like to know how this manufacturer comes to the conclusion that the bramble marking is the best.

One point which has not been made very strongly is that it was not necessary for the old balls to be badly knocked about before they would fly well. Comparatively little damage improved the flight of the ball. This, in itself, should be sufficient to convince manufacturers that they are still in many ways marking their balls excessively. It is quite evident that no particular kind of marking is required on the golf ball, although it is conceivable that a certain kind of marking might possess some slight advantage over another. It would be interesting if an exhaustive set of experiments on the lines of those already conducted by Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey could be carried out under proper supervision by some eminent scientist or by a leading firm of golf ball makers, or by some prominent paper interested in golf. The matter would undoubtedly be of very great interest to golfers generally, and would probably result in a great improvement of the balls at present on the market.

The phenomenon of the uneven flight of the smooth golf ball has never, so far as I am aware, been satisfactorily explained. We all know, of course, that practically nothing which has not a tail flies well. A tail is necessary for an arrow, for an aeroplane, for a bird to steer itself with, and even the rifle bullet would not fly well until it was, in effect, provided with a tail. It has always seemed to me that there was a possibility of an explanation of the defective flight of the smooth golf ball in this fact. It stands to reason that in the passage of the ball through the atmosphere there is a considerable compression of the air in front of the ball, and it is equally obvious that this compressed air is, if we may so express it, flowing backwards over the ball, and therefore running between the bramble markings. Of course, we are aware that it is not really a question of the air flowing backwards, but of the ball driving through the atmosphere, but we have merely to consider what may possibly be the effect of this action.

It seems to me that the air, in passing back and round the ball in the manner described, is also in a state of compression until it has passed backwards and, to a slight extent, behind the golf ball, so that we have, if we may so express it, attached to the ball a tail of compressed air which is constantly striving to resume its normal density at a slightly varying distance behind the ball in its passage through the air.

If my idea, which is expressed now in an extremely unscientific and popular form, is correct, it would seem that the roughened ball holds more straightly into this tail of compressed air than it would be possible for a smooth ball to do; in other words, it seems to me that there would be a greater possibility of the smooth ball slipping the pressure which would be accentuated on that portion of the ball which Professor Thomson describes as its nose, and it seems feasible, although I do not care to be dogmatic on this point, that if the centre of gravity of the smooth ball were untrue, as indeed the centre of gravity of nearly every smooth ball is, the effect of the pressure of the condensed air on the front of the ball would be much more pronounced with the smooth ball than it would in the case of the ball marked by excrescences or indentations.

I am aware that this idea of mine is open to argument, and I do not say for one moment that it is absolutely correct. It is undoubted that there is much uncertainty in the minds of extremely scientific men as to the cause for the uncertain flight of the smooth golf ball. Even so distinguished a scientific inquirer as Professor Sir J. J. Thomson assured me that he did not understand the reason for the erratic behaviour of the smooth ball. There is possibly another explanation, but again I put this forward tentatively. Even when a ball is driven by a golf club without appreciable spin, as indeed most golf balls are, it seems to me quite possible, especially in the case of the balls with defective centres, that before they have gone far on their journey they will proceed to acquire spin on account of the tendency of one side to lag more than the other.

It seems, then, that if this spin is set up in the manner which I described, it may, and indeed quite likely will, influence the path of the ball sufficiently to deflect it from the original line of flight, but as this spin has no very great power behind it, it seems quite likely that when it has deflected the ball from the line of flight it may be checked to such an extent that the atmosphere has a chance to get to work on the ball again and produce that which is practically a reverse spin. In this way, and in this way alone, can I see any reason for the double swerve which I have already referred to, in the carry of the golf ball. It must be understood that in the case of double swerve which I am referring to, the deflection from the straight line has always occurred at a point in the carry where one would not expect to see it if it had been occasioned by spin administered by the club, and it is always very much less indeed than the swerve would be if it had been obtained by spin produced by the club.

Also there is this other fact against the hypothesis that the swerve is produced by spin imparted at the moment of impact. In the swerve which I am referring to, both the first swerve and the return swerve which takes the ball back again into the line of flight are very slight, and in most cases practically of the same length and degree. If the original deflection from the straight line were due to rotation of the ball acquired at the moment of impact, the swerve and return to the straight line, if there were any such return, would never be so symmetrical as they are.

I can quite easily understand the double swerve of a golf ball from spin produced by the contact between the club and the ball, although I must admit that I have never seen a swerve of this nature in golf which I could put down unhesitatingly to spin acquired at the moment of impact. I must, however, when I say this, except one instance. This was in the case of a ball hit with back-spin, and although it is in a sense improper to refer to it as double swerve because it only affected the trajectory and did not alter the plane of the ball's flight in any way, it was, in a sense, a case of double swerve. It was a wind-cheater struck by a very good player at Hanger Hill. The ball flew very low and looked as though it was about to hit a bunker, when suddenly, on account of the tremendous amount of back-spin which the player had put on his ball, it rose with the ordinary rise of the wind-cheater and soared straight away for thirty or forty yards, when it began to tower in the ordinary manner of the wind-cheater. This was such an extraordinary shot that I illustrated it in Modern Golf, but I have never, in the course of fifteen years' acquaintance with the game, seen another shot of the same description.

There is no doubt whatever that double swerves may be obtained by the axis of rotation of the ball altering during the flight of the ball. I can remember quite clearly at a meeting of the All-England Lawn-tennis Club at Wimbledon, a player informing me quite seriously that a lawn-tennis ball would swerve two ways in the air. At that time I was under the impression that I knew all there was to be known about the flight of the ball. I did not contradict him, but inwardly I pitied him; but at the same time I made up my mind to watch for this phenomenon, little as I expected to see it, for in the course of at least seventeen years' practical acquaintance with the game of lawn-tennis wherein one has a splendid opportunity of observing the action of spin on the ball, I had never seen, or perhaps it would be more correct to say I had never observed, any ball swerve two ways.

It was not many days after this that I distinctly saw an American service, delivered by one of the players in the All-England Lawn-tennis Championship, swerve two ways. Since then I have looked for this phenomenon, and I have seen it happen both in lawn-tennis and golf, but I am satisfied that in golf it is not due to spin acquired at the moment of impact, as undoubtedly it is in lawn-tennis. It seems to me that with the lawn-tennis ball, which offers a very large frictional area in proportion to its weight, that it is quite feasible that during its travel, particularly in the American service, it may alter its axis of rotation on account of encountering a heavier bank of air, or for some other reason. It naturally follows that immediately this takes place the arc of the original swerve is interfered with, but in no case have I seen in lawn-tennis, as I have in golf, the original swerve of the ball exactly compensated for by the swerve back into the straight line, which is the peculiarity of the double swerve at golf.

There is no doubt that there is a considerable amount of mystery in this matter. It may appear that it is not of much importance to golfers, from a practical point of view, whether it is solved or not, but it is hard indeed to say how useful a proper understanding of the higher science of the game may be in the practice of it; and in the experiments carried out by Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey with so much patience and ability we have a very good example of the value to golfers of the scientific investigation and consideration of matters appertaining to the various implements of the game.