Golf ball
small solid core dimpled ball used in golf
A golf ball is a ball designed to be used in golf. Under the rules of golf, a golf ball has a mass no more than 1.620 oz (45.93 g), has a diameter not less than 1.680 inches (42.67 mm), and performs within specified velocity, distance, and symmetry limits. Like golf clubs, golf balls are subject to testing and approval by The R&A (formerly part of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews) and the United States Golf Association, and those that do not conform with regulations may not be used in competitions (Rule 5–1).
History
Early balls
It is commonly believed that hard wooden, round balls, made from hardwoods such as beech and box, were used for golf from the 14th through the 17th centuries.
Though wooden balls were no doubt used for other similar contemporary stick and ball games, there is no definite evidence that they were actually used in golf in Scotland. It is equally likely, if not more so, that leather balls filled with cows' hair were used, imported from the Netherlands from at least 1486 onward.
Featherie
Then or later, the featherie ball was developed and introduced. A featherie, or feathery, is a hand-sewn round leather pouch stuffed with chicken or goose feathers and coated with paint, usually white in color. A standard featherie used a gentleman's top hat full of feathers. The feathers were boiled and softened before they were stuffed into the leather pouch.
“Golf ball” enters the record as small solid core dimpled ball used in golf. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Golf, ball and small can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q919777. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1486.
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This entry incorporates text from “Golf ball” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.