In golf’s earliest days in Scotland, it’s likely that play was with a wooden ball as per other northern European stick and ball games of the later middle ages.
Moving forward, the “hairy” ball was a pouch stuffed with hair and the famous feathery was a leather pouch stuffed with goose feathers. The feathery was the ball of choice for golf from the early 18th century and is first referred to in a poem from the Netherlands, dating from 1657.
