November 6, 2017 by Philip Lewenstein

Finding Golf Balls Is Not a Compulsion But I Sure Enjoy the Sport

Monday, October 16, was a glorious fall day in the Twin Cities with temperatures in the high 60s. As I walked on the sidewalk parallel to Ramsey County Highway 96 in Vadnais Heights, I was in awe of the radiant colors—yellow, red, orange, green—highlighted by the late-afternoon sun. But I enjoyed more than fall beauty. I found four golf balls, pushing my season total to 62, possibly a record.

As I bent to pick up each ball, I was reminded of a 2013 article in the New Yorker by John McPhee, a longtime staff writer, author of more than 30 books, a writing teacher at Princeton University, and a collector of golf balls.

I would like to think that I have some similarities with McPhee, 86, considered a pioneer of creative nonfiction. I, too, do some writing, and I have taught writing courses. McPhee no longer plays golf but finds golf balls as I do. But there are degrees of separation between us.

I have written only a few magazine articles, and I have not written a book. I write only letters and occasional blog posts. McPhee teaches at an Ivy League institution. I taught at a private career school, one shut down by the government. McPhee has mastered the art and science of finding golf balls; I am an amateur.

In one of his New Yorker articles, “The Orange Trapper” (July 1, 2013), McPhee says that “compulsions are easy to come by and hard to explain. Mine include watching for golf balls, which I do with acute attention.”

I stopped playing golf, for the most part, in my early twenties. But seven or eight years ago, I established a regular walking route in Vadnais Heights and started finding golf balls, though apparently not nearly as many as McPhee. Searching for golf balls is not a compulsion, and I don’t go out of my way to find them. But I sure enjoy every ball I locate. Because of the lure of golf balls, I rarely vary my route.

McPhee, an avid bicyclist, finds balls on his rides, which go by many golf courses in New Jersey. He describes his gaze running through the woods until a white dot stops it; he then gets off his bike and collects the ball. He also sees balls while canoeing the Delaware River.

Securing balls on the current of the moving river was frustrating for McPhee, so he found a company in Michigan and purchased the “the orange trapper,” a device twenty-one inches long, with an orange head, a black grip, and a shaft of ten concentric stainless tubes with a maximum diameter of five eighths of an inch. A depression in the head’s inside top was there to secure one side of a ball.

McPhee explains that the genius of the device was in a working part, a beveled “flipper” that came through the throat and would “waggle into place on the other side of the ball.” Even with the trapper, finesse was required to trap a ball in shallow current, McPhee says.

I don’t look for balls in water, and I don’t own any devices for picking up balls; but I find balls on my regular route. From my house in Vadnais Heights, I head north on McMenemy Street until I reach Highway 96, which runs east and west through Vadnais Heights. On the north side of 96 is the North Oaks Golf Club, a par 71 course of 6,655 yards, rolling hills, numerous water hazards, and a mixture of oak and birch trees.

On the south side of Highway 96, parallel to the highway, are a grassy area, an adjacent sidewalk, and a fence; the fence serves as a border for the Vadnais-Sucker Lake Regional Park. I turn west onto 96 and follow the sidewalk for about a mile until reaching Rice Street, the border with Shoreview. Then, I turn back and walk east to McMenemy Street.

Several years ago, I began to occasionally notice golf balls on my walk. Some days I would find one ball; other days I would find two balls. And on lucky days I would find three or more balls. In the past seven or eight years, I have found more than 400 balls. I have found balls in every month from March into November.

I find balls mostly in the grassy areas next to the highway, but sometimes a find a “hot one,” recently struck by a golfer, in the middle of the sidewalk or along the fence. Occasionally, I see a ball behind the fence; I don’t own a trapper to poke through the fence to reach the ball, so I have to find an entrance and backtrack to the ball. Going out of my way takes extra effort, but it is worth the reward of gaining another ball.

The frequency of finding balls can be tied to several factors: the length of the golf season as influenced by weather, the number of rounds played, the golfers’ inaccuracies, the number of days I walk, and possible competition from other walkers.

In recent days, I found three more balls, raising the season total to 65. Over the years, I developed a trained eye for identifying white balls, but I credit some of this year’s success to having cataract surgery on each eye last winter.

It is scary to think that for me to find balls, the balls must have traveled across the heavily trafficked highway. I have never seen a ball fly or roll across the highway, but I always wonder whether a ball has ever hit a vehicle and caused an accident. McPhee reported that golfers in the United States lost three hundred million balls in a year. Each loss has its own story.

Finding golf balls can be an emotional experience. Locating a ball can provide a spark of joy on an otherwise dull day. Finding two or more balls can be exhilarating. I can be superstitious. Finding a ball or two can be an omen of success by one of my favorite sports teams that night.  Patience is required, however. I can go several days without seeing a ball before ending the drought. Seeing a white speck in the distance can briefly raise hopes that are soon extinguished when the speck is only a small piece of white paper and not a ball.

I recently did an inventory of my golf-ball collection. Most of the balls are in containers in a cabinet inside the garage. A few years ago, however, my wife purchased two large, clear vases, which she filled with golf balls; the vases sit on an end table, greatly adding to the décor of the living room. One vase has 63 balls, the other 65.

I counted 20 different brands of balls. Titleists make up about 52 percent, more than 200 balls, followed by Calloway, about 10 percent. Other brands are Bridgestone, Taylor Made, Top Flite, Nike, Pinnacle, Ultra, Wilson, Maxfli, Srixon, Futura, and Dunlop. Some balls are stamped with corporate or individual names. McPhee says one can identify the species the ball hit. Pine pitch makes a clear impression; tulip poplars tend to smear. An oak or hickory leaves a signature writ small and simple, McPhee explains. At the kitchen sink, one can tell how long a ball sat on the ground by the length of time needed to take the ground off the ball. I have not conducted such an examination but have observed that most of my balls are in good shape, and I would not hesitate to use them if I played golf.

What is the worth of my golf balls? I recently checked the sporting-goods department of my local Target. The Titleist ProV1x was listed at $47.99 a dozen while the Titleist NX Tour was $31.49. A dozen Calloway balls ranged from $21.99 to $37.99. A dozen Bridgestone balls ranged from $23.99 to $34.99 while a dozen Taylor Made balls ranged from $19.99 to $35.00.

McPhee links the brand of ball to the economic status of the golfer. Thus, since North Oaks is an affluent community, it is not surprising that quality Titleists make up the majority of the balls I find.

What will I do with my golf balls?  I have no plans except that a return to golf seems unlikely. This summer, I inquired at Play It Again Sports to see if the store purchases used golf balls? I was told sometimes in the spring at ten cents per ball. For a while, McPhee gave balls to his fishing companion but later concluded he was rich and not deserving of McPhee’s generosity. Then, he donated balls to two organizations—The First Tee and Swing 2 Tee—that teach golf and the sport’s values to children, mostly in inner cities.

Reflecting on my experience finding golf balls, I’ve wondered if this activity is a form of redemption. As a child playing golf in Duluth, I contributed dozens of balls to the woods along the courses I played. I regularly sliced balls into the woods on the right or hooked balls into the trees on the left. Of course, I often stumbled onto balls while looking for mine, somewhat alleviating the pain of my wild shots.

As this year’s ball-finding season concludes, I realize that I am not as compelled to find golf balls as McPhee or to invest in tools of the trade as he has with the orange trapper; but I enjoy the challenge and am ready to celebrate my success this winter in anticipation of the 2018 season.