[TEPaul]

In 1924 Behr proposed a "championship" ball but for the rest he suggested they should be allowed to use whatever they wanted. Was Behr the first to propose a specific and standard golf ball just for "championship" play?

www.la84foundation.org/SportsLibrary/GolfIllustrated/1924/gi215q.pdf

The ball Behr proposed for the "championship" ball was a "floater". Apparently he felt a ball that floated would offer sufficient challenge in the game for the "skilled" golfer but he apparently did not necessarily think a "floater" was the ideal ball to maximally challenge the skill of the championship golfer. He seemed to imply he felt it was sufficient enough. What he seemed to like most about the "floater" was the fact that the test of its conformance, or the fact that it floated was such a "natural" test and he tried to explain in his usual labrynthian way why that was so. I guess anyone could say it certainly was a simple test of conformance that could be used anywhere, and at any time, but he didn't exactly say that!  

Apparently less than ten years later the USGA decided to require a lighter golf ball for all but it was not at all popular with all golfers and the requirement was dropped after around a year.

It seems at this point the idea of a "unified" set of requirements on the ball for all golfers was locked in for the future.  


ALSO---see "The Ball Problem by Max Behr" in the "In My Opinion" section of this website by Geoff Shackelford

[BCrosby]

MacKenzie also wanted to see the "floater" adopted. He had several paragraphs about it in SofA.

Bob

[Adam Clayman]

Behr's warning about the loss of the essence seem confirmed by the lack of new interest in the sport, today.

[TEPaul]

Bob:

I seem to recall reading somewhere about Joshua Crane's feelings on equipment including the golf ball but I can't recall what his feelings were and I don't have all his articles at hand. Do you know what his feelings on that were or have anything written by him in that vein?

[Tom_Doak]

Tom:

Bob doesn't even have to look that up.  Crane would have just multiplied all his ratings by 0.957 (1.55 over 1.62).

[BCrosby]

Tom -

I don't recall seeing anything by Crane about the rubber core ball per se.

He did, however, have a lot to say about "improving" courses so that they would hold up against the rubber core ball.

Bob

[TEPaul]

"Tom:
Bob doesn't even have to look that up.  Crane would have just multiplied all his ratings by 0.957 (1.55 over 1.62)."

TomD:

That would probably be true if all Crane was interested in was mathematically rating golf courses and their architecture but like a lot of those "Renaissance" men back then, of which I feel both Behr AND Crane certainly were examples, they were interested in all kinds of ideas as well as discussing and developing them.

I'm also sort of interested in finding out (if possible) if Behr wrote about the problems with the golf ball as just another way of dealing with Crane in his debate with him or whether he wrote about it because it had become a general concern in golf at that time and everyone was trying to figure out what to do about it.

I think we need to appreciate that a lot was going on in the evolution and development of the game and architecture over here at that time and these guys were trying to figure out what it should all be both then and certainly in the future.

I think very much in the back of Behr's mind, as with others, is they were faced with two real "crossroads" issues at that time and they knew it-----eg how to continue to popularize the game in America while at the same time trying to preserve some of the old traditional things about the game before it really got to America.

In a way most of this stuff was probably something of a "two-way stretch" dynamic of trying to work out the best of the old and the best of the new and in the mid to late 1920s they felt that dynamic was beginning to hit and expose some pretty serious crisis points.  

[BCrosby]

Making a ratings adjustment based on a 1.55 over 1.62 ratio is so crazy that it probably makes sense.  

Bob  

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