Oct. 19, 2004 – Pat Ward-Thomas, The Guardian's late, great golf-writer, spent four years as a POW in Stalag Luft 3 after being shot down on a bombing raid over Germany.

He had only been there a few weeks when a hickory-shafted ladies' mashie found in one of the huts sparked great excitement. Could we have a ball, please, squadron-leader Pat asked the camp commandant, but he didn't have one.

"OK, then, give me a block of wood, and I'll make one!"

And so he did - by winding string around a wooden core, then covering it with strips of old shoe leather and sticking plaster.

It was a replica (almost) of the bull's hide "featherie" ball of 300 years before, and helped keep scores of fellow prisoners happy, while others dug a tunnel for one of the most daring escapes of the Second World War.

Everybody knows how Alfred the Great played golf when he wasn't fighting the Danes, and why William the Conqueror banned the game as a waste of valuable archery time.

What most of us don't know much about, however, are the mysteries of the ball. Until now, that is.

Take a bow, Kevin McGimpsey. Garth, his younger brother, has already won fame as a Walker Cup-winning captain and Ireland's most-capped amateur international, but it is Kevin the author and historian to whom we owe a special round of applause for a book that took 10 years to research and write, 'The Story of the Golf Ball.'

Harry McCaw, a past-captain of both Royal Co Down and Royal and Ancient clubs, calls this Kevin's legacy to the game; "a mammoth effort universally received by all who love and care about golf."

It's more than just a collector's item. For as long as I can remember, '500 Years of Golf Balls' and Leo Kelly's 'Antique Ball Reference' were the two most definitive works on golf ball design and development.

Now this ranks on a par, if not better, than both. In no other sport do the physical characteristics of the ball influence a player's performance so profoundly, and McGimpsey explains why.

His research has been voluminous and answers a multitude of questions; from how skilled club pros earned a good living from making half-a-dozen feathery balls a day to the French schoolmaster who drove one downwind a measured distance of 360 yards on a frosty morning at St Andrews.

It was in the mid-1800's that the gutta-percha ball, the invention of a St Andrews University professor, displaced the 'featherie' and angered one of the town's famous ballmakers so much that he bought every one he could find, and burned them.

Only when the guttie became scuffed from regular play would it get on the wing, however – thus the need for dimples on a ball – but it was cheap to make, and if damaged or knocked out of shape, could be plunged into hot water and remolded.

Although the gutta-percha era spanned only 60 years, it was by all accounts the beachhead from which golf would enslave the world.

New harder woods were necessary if clubs were to absorb the shock impact of unyielding gutties, and were already popular by the time Coburn Haskell, a Cleveland chemist, discovered a method for winding rubber thread around a pebble.

It was America's first significant contribution to golf, and would revolutionize the game.

Like brother Garth, Queen's law graduate Kevin McGimpsey was born with golf in his veins.

Kevin's boyhood hobby was collecting Matchbox and Dinky models, and in partnership with fellow-Bangorian, Stewart Orr, he turned this into a successful mail order business prior to establishing the now famous Chester Toy Museum.

He has also co-written several reference books on collective toys, and recently earned a literary award from the British Golf Society.

Golfing memorabilia is Kevin's forte, and as consultant to Bonhams, he masterminds two big shows a year for the London auction house.

His home is in the North Wales village of Hawarden, where England footballer Michael Owen lives, and he plays golf off a single-figure handicap. 'The Story of the Golf Ball' would make a unique Christmas gift, or, better still, a club or society captain's prize.

Only 1,500 copies have been printed, and it costs £55 (postage included), or leather-bound deluxe edition, £144. Write to Kevin at PO Box 120, Deeside CH5 3HE, or phone 01244 539414.