d completed his researches he wrote: "I understand it now, too late by 35 years at least." One of his sons, F. G. Tait, a famous amateur golfer, helped his father with the experimental side of his researches. Of course Tait worked before the days of high speed photography and other sophisticated laboratory apparatus. He devised an ingenious way to make measurements of the spin of a ball. He wrote: "When we fastened one end of a long untwisted tape to the ball and the other to the ground, and induced a good player to drive the ball (perpendicularly to the tape) into a stiff clay face a yard or two off, we find the tape is always twisted; no doubt to different amounts by different players--say from 40 to 120 or so turns per second. The fact is indisputable." THE LIFTING FORCE ON A SPINNING BALLProfessor Tait states clearly that a ball, driven with spin about a horizontal axis with the top of the ball coming toward the golfer, has a lifting force on it which keeps the ball in the air much longer than would be possible without spin. He explained the source of hooks and slices in the rotation of the ball about axes other than horizontal. He wrote: "I have been very, perhaps even unnecessarily, cautious in leading up to this conclusion--I have the vivid recollection of the "warm" reception which my heresies met with--from almost all good players to whom I mentioned them. The general feeling seemed to be one in which incredibility was altogether overpowered by disgust." Though Professor Tait may have felt that his work was not appreciated by the golfers of his day, his work did open up the field of scientific research on the aerodynamics of golf. As far as I can determine, Tait did not consider the effect of the roughness of the surface of the ball on its motion through the air. Though rubber balls were beginning to come into use about the time of his death, he did all his work with gutta-percha balls. Part TwoROUGHENING SURFACE HELPS LIFT...
