Better Golfing through Chemistry

I myself am one who loves to golf, more than golf I love chemistry! It has been rough to cultivate both passions and find connections between them but just recently I have stumbled upon what could be known as the great connection between golf and chemistry; beyond the ponds or chemicals used to clean the golf balls and clubs. What chemists and engineers are doing is finding new ways to improve the golf club, and the gold ball. Both of those improvements are seen to have a huge effect on the way players play the game. Golf throughout history has been one of constant development and refinement. Equipment makers strive to make the game easier; rule makers and course designers strive to keep it in the hands of golfers who tend to grab anything that promises to shave a couple of strokes off their score. Recognizing this, the game's authorities are constantly on the lookout for anything that will give golfers an unfair advantage. Golf spread through the United States just before the turn of the century. The first significant contribution came in 1898 with the development of the rubber-core golf ball by a wealthy Cleveland golfer named Coburn Haskell and his friend Bertram G. Work of the B. F. Goodrich Rubber Company in Akron. After this the other major character change for the golf club was the transition from hickory to steel which was extremely difficult to do. Using hickory made the golfers swing much less efficient and harder to do, but chemistry used the dynamics of steel to allow for the movement of the stick not to require a lot of outside force and dynamic, making the swing come more naturally. With all these advances, as well as such recent ones as "frequency-matched" carbon and boron composite shafts, "perimeter-weighted" cavity-backed drivers, and the use of such materials as beryllium-copper alloys, titanium, and graphite, clubs are clearly improved, and golfballs fly farther than in the past.  So chemistry has made the game of golf more intense and what we see it today as being.  Never again can I say that I do not see a connection between golf and chemistry and no longer should physics be seen as the main science involved with golf.

See http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/it/1993/1/1993_1_46.shtml


Posted by Christopher Cole