While playing an interclub match last month, my playing partner found a golf ball in some long grass.

He tossed it my way and I picked it up. It was very old. I mean, very old.

The colour of the ball had faded to brown and the ball generally looked very tired.

But it was a Hot Dot 1 and it intrigued me.

The Hot Dot 1 golf ball I played with compared to a Titleist ball of today.

So much so that I asked my interclub opposition if I could change balls. He gave me a strange look but said yes.

I played the Hot Dot 1 for the remaining few holes of our match and again for 18 holes the following day.

I wanted to know what the difference would be given that the ball could be 20-30 years old.

I didn’t notice any difference. Someone asked does the Hot Dot 1 spin less for chip and approach shots, given that it lacked two or three decades of technology.

My answer was no. But I added maybe I am not a good enough player for it to make a difference.

But I remained amazed that I did not notice any difference between it and a new ball of today. Once again, maybe I am not good enough for it to make a difference.

I was breaking the rules by playing the Hot Dot 1. It is undersized by today’s rules.

We in New Zealand used to play what was known as the British ball. The British ball measured 41.1 millimetres in diameter.

That changed in 1990 when the British-based governing body, the R&A, went the way of the so-called American ball with minimum diameter of 42.67 millimetres. That remains the rule of today.

When American professional golfers played in the British Open prior to 1974 they almost unanimously preferred the smaller ball because it supposedly provided a bit more distance and was more workable in the wind.

The R&A took the first step to standardising the size of the golf ball when in 1974 it decided the small ball could no longer be used in the British Open. That meant that golf's major championships, at least, were all played with the same size golf balls from 1974 onward.

Hot Dot 1 — a top golf ball from the past