What Are the Small Dents on a Golf Ball Called?

The small dents covering your golf ball are called dimples, and they are far more than just a quirky a part of the golf ball design - they are the powerful secret sauce to sending it soaring down the fairway. In this guide, we'll cover what dimples are, the fascinating science of how they work, and a bit about the history behind the idea. Most importantly, you will understand how they directly influence your ball flight and how knowledge of them can help to improve your game.

The Science of Flight: Why Do Golf Balls Have Dimples?

You may be surprised to hear that a completely smooth golf ball, when struck by a professional golfer, would only travel about half as far as a modern-looking dimpled ball. Why is such a small design element responsible for so much power and air-time? It's really an elegant piece of engineering and aerodynamics, but is something that a normal everyday golf player like you or I can understand.

The two enemies to your golf ball flying toward the target are drag and gravity, and the magic of dimples helps to tackle one while boosting the lifting motion on the other. Here’s a bit of insight on how these work in tandem with each other on the way down the fairway.

Reducing Drag with a "Boundary Layer"

Imagine pushing a completely flat paddle through the water, as opposed to one shaped like the hull of a racing boat... a flat surface creates far more resistance on its way through the water. Aerodynamics works the same way... whenever an object travels, there will be a pocket of low-pressure behind it where the air rushes to occupy that vacant area. This is also called a "wake", and the suction of the air in the path of the ball will slow it down -- also known as a pressure drag.

Here’s where dimples come into play. As a dimpled golf ball spins backwards after being hit:

• The dimples catch the air and create a very thin layer of turbulence around the golf ball's surface.
• This thin turbulent buffer of air is known as the turbulent boundary layer, and it clings tightly to the ball's surface much further around the back side so smoothly that the golf ball's wake becomes much, much smaller.
• Because the back of the golf ball's wake has now shrunk compared to a normal ball, the pressure drag factor that existed before has become much smaller, slowing the golf ball down less so it shoots through the sky much further than a smooth one could go, as it stays going faster for much longer.

In less complex terms: the dimples are "scuffing up" the air's path, tricking it into creating a cozy "air blankie" for the ball, something that is a much narrower profile moving through the windy expanse to its target to reduce the drag on its path and to continue on toward its destination with all due speed. Dimples reduce the aerodynamic lift on a golf ball by as much as half the distance traveled by a smooth counterpart, which means that you get a much better total distance, with no change to the power of your swing at all.

Creating Lift Through Spin

Dimples not only reduce what slows a ball down - they actually help to keep it aloft in the air. This occurs as a beautiful interplay involving backspinning, a phenomenon called Bernoulli's Principle, and dimples

As every golfer learns: for a crisp iron shot, the club striking down and through the ball will make it backspin into the air. Here's what's going on:

1. The spinning dimples are going to drag air up around the top of your golf ball. This causes the stream over the top to travel farther so it's more high pressure air and creates lift on your shot than does the smooth surface.
2. Since pressure on the lower half of the ball is then significantly lower, the pressure differential between top and bottom creates lift (think airplane wing). This forces the ball up.
3. Without the thin turbulent boundary layer from dimples, there would be too little friction holding air around your ball creating no effective way for the spin to work it’s lift properly.

To cut to the chase, this means a dimpled ball gets significantly more carry and stays airborne for longer, so it gives you the classic high-arcing golf shot we're all looking familiar looks. Combining both a diminished drag force and a more assertive lift makes for greater distances - which lets players of all ability levels get the ball far down the fairway on their big drives.

From Smooth Accident to Engineered Perfection: A Brief History

The use of dimples on a golf ball wasn't some immediate breakthrough, of course. For hundreds of years golf enthusiasts had a rough idea that battered, scarred golf balls seemed to have a superior feel... they had yet to find the answer a more direct way of manufacturing the design.

The earliest golf balls in the 17th century were so-called "featheries"-- hand stitched leather pouches filled tightly by boiling wet goose fathers feathers. They took on a slightly bumpy look when they lost moisture, of course. Yet no one saw why, at any rate the first smooth golf balls that didn't go so well, which came from the Gutta Perch which was a sap molded into sphere shapes which happened after that, that sap's texture seemed really to give the ball its own distinct spin in an unusual way for the old smooth surface.

At some point a new style that was being seen in London and the city became popular in Gutta Perch from which old-fashioned golf balls had been developed a while, golfers noticed scarred, battered balls actually performed better, and started getting players on the course deliberately batterring the new balls that their shots had already marred a little so that they would go on for longer stretches!

Finally, in and around the early 20th century innovators like William Taylor formalized the bumps into a dimple-like pattern... this finally gave them all a way of controlling how to create the design consistently for longer, deeper cuts that made for better flight performances from these little pieces of rubber or soft plastic. Today's golf ball's construction are much bigger, with the number being counted around 300 to over 500 in various different arrangements! The number of dimples on these kinds of spheres are not constant... but there exist all the more options about size, the form of cut and the shapes, with each ball produced having had intensive workshopping for a custom designed and well defined ball flight

Not All Dimples Are Created Equal

Walk down your neighborhood pro shop's golf ball section you a huge number or styles and designs populating the racks. Manufacturers have designed each for slightly different types of golfers looking to get various characteristics out of their shots - from low spin, tour level performance with fast ball speeds all the ways down a smooth drive off the tee every time! From shallow dishes you can get that much more spin control from, to low penetrating looks for greater distance shots under heavy wind conditions. Below are listed three dimple design factors companies try and affect with how they try give players those subtle ways an edge off tee:

• Number of Dimples: Modern-day balls have from approximately 300 to over 500 of them. No magic number applies here... instead the way they are positioned matters more!
• Shape and Size: Dimples come in circle shapes as old as balls have them - there are now hexagonal, multi-faceted patterns to interrupt flight patterns. The size, depth, and edge radii all affect their performance - a large change for what can often appear to simply be decorative design is always present now when it comes to the look... and sound we see in golfing sports broadcasts where we often may not stop and wonder, what has changed here to put these golf professionals playing today, playing a kind that feels nothing similar, in fact better than before?
• Pattern: The way dimples are placed together defines much in overall aerodynamics too - is that particular one designed giving a high launching, low-spinning distance or a high spin, tour level control look coming from having them arranged in a high lift/low drag pattern?? It all just feels a little more special once you think about all that engineering poured from your box fresh... into what now we see is something quite specific today to what was even a decade or two ago when all brands came more-or-less similar in design to most popular golf equipment!

How a Dimple Affects Your Choice

Knowing this information allows you now for a little shopping expertise next golf pro shop stroll: knowing how each may shape... and spin you an added bit of benefit while you golf may lead one to trying or another... and possibly more golf scores!

• High Trajectory Balls: Balls aiming to promote a higher launch will use shallow dimensions of greater diameter, grabbing greater hold over both wind flow with higher spin and helping players having moderate swings hit for greater distance! It lifts off right faster while helping players that slice get much sharper curve while on the line it was hit... to some extent too... just in the air... because everything’s turning over in just slightly that fast a rotational speed!
• Low Trajectory Balls: Alternatively, balls that give a lower and more piercing angle flight have deep dimples cut smaller that reduce lift to offer less high swing performance... also good a golfer will find these handy for playing in heavier wind since it just cuts on by the line you sent him in. And of course because its a lot flatter spin rate coming down, the player tends get somewhat further rolls upon the landing... since again, the shot path is just a bit less likely to stop for anything if on the path of going toward its objective.... hence why they like them for wind resistance and just having some fun

Your Game's New Best Friend? The Dimple

So the small craters covering you are far then simple decoration... these little wonders of aerodynamic technology are critical to all golf technology from any maker in recent past... knowing these factors affect you as golfer goes very far for you improving at this sport. Two immediate steps in order today to start on that road!

The first things should already be a given, a CLEAN ball flies consistently. Filling a ball to its bottom's with sand will take out any benefits and make for an unreliable path to your objective every shot for sure... always have a wet place like a towel... a ball cleaner at tee boxes and brush... carry you that much towards making all those hits predictable enough on their journey.... to make you seem as good! Remember, the science works perfectly for clean, smooth surfaces too, just less for a lot less longer but if those grooves fill just that one hit your hit's predictability becomes very less of guaranteed factor!! You might take 10 of from you! This keeps your score even close and makes every single shot fly pure... like you've learned for the day!

Final Thoughts

The tiny indents on a golf ball, called dimples, are a testament to how small details can lead to enormous changes in performance. By creating a turbulent layer of air, they strategically reduce drag and enhance lift, allowing for the powerful, arcing shots characteristic of modern golf. The specific number, shape, and pattern of these dimples are carefully engineered to fit different types of players and swing speeds.

Understanding the physics of why your ball flies a certain way is a big step, but applying that insight on the course during a real round is what truly makes a difference. To bridge that gap, I've designed Caddie AI. When you're facing a tough approach shot over a bunker on a windy day, it can be hard to decide which ball characteristic - lower-spinning or higher-spinning - is your friend. You can describe the situation to the app and get an expert-level recommendation in seconds, giving you that extra layer of confidence to commit to your shot and execute it flawlessly.