Golf is a sport where a stick hits a ball then something happens like most sports. Golf is different in the way that the objective of the game is to hit the ball into a small hole into the ground with as few strokes of the golf club as possible. This combination of interesting enough game mechanics and the slow gameplay of around four hours for a single round of golf contribute to the fact that golf is a sport people would consider one of those sports nobody cares about unless you’re watching like Tiger Woods then people care because he’s famous or something.
Friction is also something most people don’t care about but friction is way cooler than golf. If you put these two interesting enough topics together, you get an interesting look at how golf works and why people buy golf shoes and gloves which make you look like a dork. There are many places in golf where friction is necessary and without it, you wouldn’t be able to do anything. If there wasn’t any friction between the ground and you, then you wouldn’t be able to really swing a golf club as you’d probably just spin around. Imagine you trying to swing a golf club on an ice rink. It’d probably be hilarious looking and really funny.
But what even is friction? This seems like a simple enough question to answer but the answer might not be as straightforward as you might think. Friction is a force that acts in the opposite direction of a moving object and causes the objects’ kinetic energy to be transferred into thermal energy (heat). Friction is what causes your hands to get warm when you rub them together, for instance.
Golf shoes increase the friction between you and the ground or else you wouldn’t even be able to hit the bolf gall with your fancy metal stick. Golf gloves also work with the same principle and without golf gloves then your sweaty hands would slip and you’d wouldn’t be able to do anything. Golf clubs also utilize friction which is essential to applying backspin to the golf ball which alters the trajectory of the ball.
Time to address the elephant in the room, which is the golf ball itself. Your typical golf ball is well known for having little dimples in it. These dimples utilize friction to create turbulent air which clings to the ball for longer periods of time than a smooth ball and thus allows it to travel farther by reducing drag. You don’t want friction with your golf ball because then it wouldn’t go anywhere due to drag. Dimples also affect the lift of the ball. Dimples also don’t just come in circular shapes and balls with hexagonal dimples also exist. Without the dimples, the ball would only travel for about half the time compared to with dimples.
Now because I’m not a professional golfer and the most experience I have with golf is playing mini-golf (not even Top Golf), I decided to interview Owen “Sue” Ettinger. When I asked him what experience he had with friction in golf, he said the following: “The spin that is put on the ball. That specific moment when the ball makes contact with the club. Golfers can use that to make the ball do what they want.” Now as he pointed out, golfers can basically make the ball do anything they want with the correct spin on the ball and you can only apply spin on the ball if friction is present.
To reinforce how important friction is to the ball in the game of golf, I interviewed Karthik Mallya and asked him to give an instance of when friction would appear in golf to which he replied, “the ball cutting through the air.” This is a great example of the fact that most people identify the golf ball as being very, very important to the game. Karthik has also been to Top Golf before which further adds to his golf qualifications.
Friction can also flip from being helpful to harmful. An example of this is when you’re putting the ball and want it to go into the hole but it just suddenly veers in a different direction. Friction was helping you as it enabled the ball to roll in the first place but now it’s become your worst enemy as it has failed you and didn’t let you hit the ball into the hole.
Although friction is pretty hidden in a lot of sports, it still plays a pretty important role in sports. In golf, it literally can change the entire game even if the friction on your ball is a bit too much as it drastically changes how far a ball goes.
