GOLF BALL UTOPIA

You are looking at golf ball utopia. You are also looking straight into the eyes of a fruit fly.

Modern ‘super’ golf balls are made from synthetic rubber; polybutadiene, which lose 20% of their energy with each bounce.

The humble fruit fly and other insects jump and flap there wings using natural super elastic protein; resilin. Natural resilin out-stretches and out-bounces every known human made material. Scientists in Australia have recently found a process to make synthetic resilin, which is almost perfectly elastic.

So there you are a golf ball made from synthetic resilin would be golf ball utopia. With its 97% resilience it would be the ultimate performance material. Golfers could see a distance improvement of 20%, and I’m not talking marketing hype, this is material science. Tee shots could reach over 400 yards, leaving most par 4’s a drive and chip shot.

But for us at Golf Refugees the real eureka moment is the fact synthetic resilin is biodegradable. All of those millions of lost high performance golf balls would simply biodegrade. Unlike today's synthetic rubber balls which stick around between 100 - 1,000 years.

Three cheers for the fruit fly and jumping fleas.

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