This a copy of the NY times Magazine article from Sunday,
12/09/12...enjoy
A Better Golf Ball
By GREG NETZER
golf ball presents a complex fluid dynamics challenge. A blunt sphere pulls
air along with it as it flies, creating a wake, and the energy needed to pull
this air b the drag b slows it down. The challenge is to reduce the drag,
allowing the ball to fly farther.
Thatbs why golf balls have dimples: they reduce drag by disturbing the air
and keeping it in contact with the ball longer. For decades, designers strove
to add more dimples to a ballbs surface, and innovation stopped once
theybd
covered 65 to 75 percent of the ball. Then, in 1999, a Callaway Golf
researcher and former Boeing engineer named Steve Ogg designed a
conglomeration of dimples that covered 86 percent of the surface of the ball,
and designers returned to the challenge of bettering the design. It was Ogg,
however, who bettered himself by tossing 90 years of industry knowledge out
the window with one simple thought: eliminate the dimples.
Instead, Ogg covered the ball with a series of ridges, aligned as
interlocking hexagons and pentagons like chicken wire, which Callawaybs
marketing department calls a bbtubular lattice network.bb Ogg altered
the
distance from the spherical surface of the ball to the top of the hexagonsb
ridges in increments of two ten-thousandths of an inch. The most efficient
tube height, he discovered, is 83 thousandths of an inch.
Oggbs geometric design achieved the holy grail of ball design: 100 percent
surface coverage. Technically the ball b the Callaway HX b has no flat
spots, and aerodynamically it has no peer: in test after test the HX flew
farther than any ball Callaway had ever tested.
The HX design b bbone of those sudden, come-to-you things,bb Ogg
says b
meets all U.S.G.A. specifications. PGA Tour players are already begging to
play it. Come March, when the HX arrives in pro shops nationwide, its promise
of distance and accuracy will be available for the rest of us.
Comments,fellow amateur Aero-dyna-mania fans ?...Bob,winded,Wanner
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