Although the ball has no visible markings, its dimple pattern shows its age.
Courtesy of Omni Homestead Resort
Earlier this week, a missing golf ball was found at a prestigious Virginia course, but not at the official time. The rules of the game allow a three-minute search. This ball has been lost for almost 100 years.
That, however, is what the evidence suggests to Mark Fry, director of golf at the Omni Homestead Resort, the historic Allegheny Mountain resort where the discovery was made.
The area is home to classic courses, one of which is aptly named the Old Course. Built in 1892, it is lined with mature oaks and maples that workers remove throughout the year, pull dead and fallen trees, and cut them into firewood for the area. Usually, this work is done without incident. However, this past Monday, after splitting a thick piece of oak, a crew member noticed two golf balls embedded in the wood. Both were covered in dust and water. And while nothing looked particularly new, one, in particular, looked very old. Although there were no markings or letters visible on it, its throw characteristics were easily recognized, including the outdated cover with the square dimple pattern of the type popular a century ago.
“It was obvious that there had been a long time in that tree,” said Fry.
How it happened is another story.
Among other things, the Old Course is known for having the longest running first tee in the United States. The course has seen a lot of golf from many famous resort guests. Many American presidents have played it. Sam Snead made the place his home away from home.
Somewhere along the line, somewhere on the Old Course, a ball with a square-dimple pattern was placed in an oak tree, possibly wrapped in a tree trunk.
“Maybe someone hit it there, or maybe someone put it there,” Fry said. “Whatever happened, the ball stayed up there and a tree grew around it.”
Pinpointing the origins of football — who played it, when and where — is nearly impossible, but Fry and his colleagues at Omni Homestead would at least like to know what kind of ball it was. Could it be, for example, a Haskell ball, a rubber wound ball commonly called gutta percha? They haven't had a chance to investigate yet. A few days ago, a thick section of oak, with a ball stuck to it like a drive connected to the fairway, was in Fry's office, a lively source of conversation between Fry and his team.
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Learning more about it will require a closer look from an expert. Meanwhile, studying the image from a distance, Victoria Nenno, senior historian at the USGA Golf Museum and Library, offered this assessment in an email to GOLF.com: “The diamond or mesh (square) pattern probably dates from between -1910 and 1930. Most likely, he added, the ball is a rubber core. “But without further testing we can't test whether it's a solid (single, mold-made) gutta percha ball.”
It is not uncommon, of course, for modern golfers to play swinging machines. Wasn't the ball a modern hickory sticker? From where Fry sits, the size of the oak – about 15 inches in diameter – and the fact that the ball is buried inside it, means there's no chance of the ball going astray any time soon.
“Obviously that ball was there for decades to be completely taken over by the tree,” he said.
What the recreation center pursues with its findings will depend in part on what they learn about it.
“We're definitely going to archive it somehow,” Fry said. “But it would be nice if we could point to any additional history around it to make sure it's being shown the right way.”
For now, he's just having fun thinking about it.
“You can let your imagination go to all kinds of possibilities,” she said. “Maybe this ball was hit by President Taft.”
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