Golf Balls Were Originally Made of Leather Stuffed with Feathers

For centuries, the essential tool of golf was a delicate and costly handcrafted sphere. From the 15th century until the mid-1800s, the standard was the "featherie," a ball made from a small pouch of horse (Review) or cowhide that was stitched while wet. A top hat's worth of goose feathers, boiled to make them pliable, was meticulously stuffed into the pouch through a small opening. As the ball dried, the leather would shrink and the feathers would expand, creating a surprisingly hard and dense sphere ready for the links.

The process was so labor-intensive that a single master craftsman could produce only a handful of featheries in a day. This scarcity made them incredibly expensive, with a single ball often costing more than a player's club. Their performance was also inconsistent; they were rarely perfectly spherical and flew erratically. Worse, a damp day on the course could ruin them, as moisture would cause the leather to soften and the ball to become a soggy, unplayable weight. The invention of the cheaper, more durable gutta-percha ball in 1848 quickly made the featherie obsolete, but for over 400 years, it was the fragile heart of the game.