Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun The nonelastic rubber obtained from the latex of the South American tree Manilkara bidentata. It has been used in the manufacture of golf-ball covers and machine belts.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun Same as
balata-gum .
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun A West Indian sapotaceous tree (
Bumelia retusa ). - noun The bully tree (
Minusops globosa ); also, its milky juice (balata gum), which when dried constitutes an elastic gum calledchicle , orchicle gum .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun when dried yields a hard substance used e.g. in golf balls
- noun a tropical hardwood tree yielding balata gum and heavy red timber
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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Its core was wrapped in tightly wound elastic threads, and its cover was made of a soft rubber called balata, which gave the pros the feel, high spin and control they needed to work their magic around the greens.
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By far the biggest adjustment I had to make in playing with wood and balata involved sound.
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Modern premium balls, typified by Titleist Pro V1s, have nearly the feel and short-game control of balata balls, plus distance and durability.
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I discovered the balata balls last year in my basement, miraculously preserved in their unopened package from the mid-1990s.
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They consisted of a core wound round with rubber bands and encased in a rubber-like shell (the balata), which provided great feel around the greens but cut and scuffed easily.
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In addition, since balata balls spin more than modern balls, they slice and hook more, too.
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As an experiment, I played a round of golf this week with old-fashioned wooden woods and a sleeve of virgin balata balls.
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I also discovered an unopened sleeve of balata Maxfli XF balls from the mid-1990s.
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These were such an expensive indulgence for me at the time (balata balls had great feel but cut easily) that I never actually used them.
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These were such an expensive indulgence for me at the time (balata balls had great feel but cut easily) that I never actually used them.
A glut of golf balls lf Journal JOHN PAUL NEWPORT 2008
knitandpurl commented on the word balata
"By and by, after a few years, Mack and Raiss let me share in the profits in my district, a tiny share, but enough to give me some surplus income, which I invested in a little island smack in the Amazon, where I planted rubber trees and tobacco, coffee and cocoa, and drew a high yield of balata gum and oil from the juicy kernels of the babassu palm, which I rafted down to Pará."
-Tintin in the New World by Frederic Tuten, p 170
July 10, 2008