The Golf Ball Book

Every golfer who has ever teed up a golf ball on the first tee of any golf course at any time will enjoy owning this book. Guaranteed! It is a book tracing the evolution of the golf ball back to the feather ball and theories on what came before. You’ll learn about the gutta percha period, the rubber core balls, how and by who mmaterials were discovered, quirky offerings such as the Radio ball, the different cover materials of the modern ball and the latest innovations for the 21st century. To help establish the time of these events, we’ve included anecdotes about the people who invented the balls and the competitors who used them, plus a timeline of golf ball milestones, along with the rules of golf—those that concern the golf ball directly.

Along with the text there are approximately 165 photographs—most quite large—of some very rare golf balls, images of early ball packaging, plus early golf tees, etc., from the wonderful collection of David Berkowitz, the private collections of Dr. Gary Wiren and Udo Machat, the designer and publisher of this book.

The text was written by Larry Dennis, a national award winning writer and editor with a long and noteworthy career in golf and sports journalism. For more than 13 years he was a Senior Editor for Golf Digest. Then, for almost six years he was the Editor-in-Chief of Senior Golfer. Dennis has written 18 books on golf, including “Golf’s Magnificent Challenge” with legendary architect Robert Trent Jones, winner of the USGA’s International Book of the Year Award in 1989, and “How to Become a Complete Golfer” with Bob Toski and Jim Flick, the third-best-selling golf instruction book in history. His book with Byron Nelson was a first-year selection in the Classics of Golf series.

We think that the golf ball has been overlooked far too long as the subject of a book. We know that this will shed some light on this worthwhile topic.

Customer Review: Timeline scores a plus with golf ball history
Being a golf enthusiest in the “Great white north” country of Canada we find ourselves with a lot of downtime away from the sport. Snow slows down the putting. However my wife gave me a copy of the Golf Ball Book for Christmas which seemed to take me away from the harshness of those long winter months (and now my wife has enjoyed the book as well, go figure). As I consider myself a bit of a history buff what I found intriguing about The Golf Ball Book was the ability for the author to parallel the golf balls evolution with other relevant historical occurences. Made it for a great read while putting it into perspective. A definite must to any golf enthusiest’s library.

Customer Review: This is a really cool book…
That’s what literally hundreds of buyers have told me. And naturally I agree with them rather than with Mr Plimpton’s negative review. He misses the point to the way the book is presented. Most people, including me, have a problem putting time periods from previous centuries in their precise context. That was the reason for including parallel occurrences. For the mis-spelled name, I am sorry.
Buy Now at Amazon