Will they help your game? Here is everything you need to know about waterlogged golf balls. Generally speaking, golf balls are constructed of a cover, and then inside there are one two or sometimes three additional layers of materials. The cover of the golf ball is usually made of Surlyn or a Urethane material. The dimple pattern on the golf ball is created by following the USGA guidelines regarding golf balls suitable for play.
To determine how much golf balls are affected when they go underwater, we need to break this down into two categories, the first being new golf balls and the second being used golf balls. If you take a brand new, never hit golf ball and submerge it in water, you will get a very different result than a ball that has been played for quite some time.
A new golf ball has no cuts or scratches in the cover. It has never been compressed with the force of a golf club. For a new golf ball to be affected by water, it needs to stay submerged for quite some time. How long precisely before it is affected is hard to say. However, it seems that weeks and months can go by, and there is very little change in the flight of the golf ball.
These are the balls that you played for seventeen holes, or the one that has been in your bag for a few months and comes out on a mulligan. There are some scratches, some slight imperfections, but it is an otherwise suitable golf ball.
When this type of golf ball heads into a pond or a lake, it gets waterlogged pretty quickly. In some studies, it only takes a few hours for the water to reach the inner core and start to impact the yardage on the golf ball. When a golf ball with these micro-cracks ends up in a pond, water will seep into the center or core of the golf ball. When this happens, the core is not nearly as active as it was because of the water.
It loses most of its spring effect that makes it fly. When the golf ball eventually dries out, it is still not as effective as a golf ball that did not spend any time submerged in the water. The longer the ball stays in the water, the less it will fly.
Now, you may be thinking you can live without a few extra yards as long as you save some money. For a golf ball that has been hit several times and has some tiny imperfections in the cover, it will only take several hours for the golf ball to lose distance. This is not that much time. If you hit a golf ball into the water off the tee and you can reach it with your ball retriever, that golf ball is more than fine to keep using without any differences.
While invisible from the outside, this damage will clearly affect the driving distance off of the tee. Studies show that after just one week in the water, lake balls will lose 5 to 10 yards in driving distance off of the tee; after 3 months, the distance loss widens to 20 to 30 yards.
Many lake ball packagers are just giving a facelift to the golf balls they find by sandblasting. Through this treatment, the outermost transparent sealing layer of the golf ball is completely removed.
The same holds true if mud has filled in the dimples found around its exterior. While we might only be speaking about fractions of a millimetre per yard, what if this figure is multiplied by yards or more? You could easily sacrifice accuracy and loft as distance increases.
Additionally, an imperfect ball will not roll straight. This could cause you to sacrifice your precision during a chip shot or when putting. The main question is whether or not you feel that such risks are worth it. The good news is that most professional cleaned balls will not encounter these issues, as they would otherwise tarnish the reputation of the provider and the club. There can be times when a supplier refinishes the entire surface of a ball that has been reclaimed from a lake.
While this might ensure that no imperfections are present, another problem may arise. It is nearly impossible to determine the original manufacturer.
Although this might be a negligible concern for some, others are sticklers in terms of their perceived levels of comfort while on the course. We have covered a significant amount of information throughout this article. This is why it is a good idea to summarise our findings with the help of a quick comparison.
Here are some of the main benefits associated with reclaimed lake golf balls:. Having said this, it is only fair to not some possible drawback associated with used lake golf balls:. So, is buying lake balls a viable option? The answer will ultimately depend upon your preferences and skill level. Furthermore, you will need to compare the price of a new box and a bundle of used balls.
Is there a significant difference? Some people are skeptical about the performance of golf balls that have spent time underwater. A lot of people have done testing on this — both in labs and with golfers on the course — and the results are always consistent.
Lab tests, including our own, show little or no loss in yardage compared to new balls, and most golfers report no appreciable difference in play.
But most of this research is based on tests of mint-quality used golf balls pulled from water hazards with no understanding of how much time each ball spent underwater. But how much time before a ball's performance is significantly changed?
We decided to try to answer that question by being the first to commission a University-run, independent research study to find out. The goal? Since we typically dive courses twice a year or more, the average used ball spends an average of three months or less underwater.
Raffel bought a bunch of brand new Titleist Pro V1s ouch. He held on to some of them, and sank the rest in cages at the bottom of a 5-foot deep pond on the Oakland University Golf Course. He left one cage submerged for a month before pulling it out. He left a second cage for three months, and then a third for 5 months.
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