About this episode

Gavin Bottrell discusses his journey to revive the lost craft of feathery ball making and shares insights from his extensive research.

Gavin Bottrell joins me on this episode to reflect on a twenty year odyssey to perfect the lost craft of Feathery Ball making. Gavin is an engineer by profession and became fascinated with how one might reverse engineer the process of developing a modern day feathery ball. Over the course of a 90 minute chat Gavin shares his learnings from the bottom of a very deep rabbit hole, from where he has perfected a skill that was lost to time and progress as the development of the gutta percha golf ball superceeded the feathery in the 1850's. Gavin recently tested his mark 43 ball against a genuine 185 year old feathery ball and replicated its performance.... he swears that this is the end of his quest..somehow I get the feeling that a doubling down may be on the cards. I'm led to believe that a book is on the cards at some point in the future, which will lay out the techniques, methodology and processes that Gavin has employed in mastering this ancient craft. We hope you enjoy the episode! Check out the following links that detail some of Gavin's fascinating research How far did Feathery Balls Actually Go? The Shape of Feathery Balls How heavy were Feathery Balls Why did Feathery Golf…

People in this episode

Host: Shane Derby

Guest: Gavin Bottrell

Topics covered

• feathery ball making
• golf history
• engineering
• craftsmanship
• sports innovation

Keywords

• feathery ball
• golf
• craft
• engineering
• history
• gutta percha
• performance testing

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Allan Robertson: King of Clubs

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