Coloured golf balls

Played for the first time in about a month yesterday and had a nightmare trying to find my (white) ball in the longish rough especially where leaves had fallen.

I bought some yellow Z Stars last year and found that these do stand out more than white balls but wondered why coloured golf balls hadn't caught on. I did a quick search for orange balls and you don't seem to be able to buy any half decent orange balls; the only ones they do were distance (i.e. rock hard) balls.

And who remembers the half coloured balls that Ping did years ago?!?!?

Bizarrely, last month I found a pink and white Ping ball from when I played in the 80's. Kept it, bound to be worth a fortune! (bet it isn't but it is quite good for checking putting lines/roll etc.

Pro V1x user 90% of the time but I do occasionally buy and use the yellow Z-Stars and really like them. I reckon it's mostly golfing snobbery as to why there aren't "good/performance/tour" balls other than the Z-Stars as the performance is up there. I'd use Yellow Pro V1x if there were such a thing.

I do quite enjoy annoying Pro V ists by pulling out a yellow number and the look on their face when I get more spin back than they do.

Played in a society day at Felixstowe Ferry a couple of years ago and the organiser decided in his wisdom that we should play a yellow ball team competition. Basically you take it in turns to play a hole with the yellow ball which scores double your stableford points for that hole. If the yellow ball gets lost then that is the end of your teams double points!
 
The organiser provided a box of yellow balls and handed each team one on the tee. My group was first to tee off and it fell on me to hit the first shot of the day with the yellow ball. I teed it up and said "I'm playing with, and you won't hear me say this very often, a Donnay number 1!"

Blue - made me smile  
I've played this game before... but we had to use a pink ball.

This raises wider questions for me though... why did you announce "Donnay number 1" on the 1st tee? What if you had carved it into the trees? Did you have a selection of yellow donnays in your bag?

Why do people do this? And when somebody tells you what ball they're playing on the 1st tee do you remember this nugget of info?

By the way, humpyd, you had better change the title of this thread before someone gets offended!  

raycastleunited wrote:...Why do people do this? And when somebody tells you what ball they're playing on the 1st tee do you remember this nugget of info?

Honesty? Yes, I do remember this tit-bit of info .

It's a good point Ray...just habit I suppose. Although aren't we meant to identify the golf ball that we are using to our playing partners on the first tee as a matter of good golfing etiquette?

Not many trees on the links at Felixstowe as it is situated right on the Suffolk coast. Plenty of meandering streams and usually a stiff sea breeze to keep the concentration focused though!

James Bond won a bar of gold from Goldfinger because he knew the ball he was using.

Ray, I play in a bit of matchplay and I like to know what someone is using. Just the other day after someone had hit two in to the same area and I found one. I asked him what he was using and he couldn't remember the number. We then found both and while they were different numbers we didn't know which was which and had only he found them had to take his word that it was the first one. It didn't matter in the end but it made me wonder.

In the case of a yellow Donnay 1, probably not a big issue.

Back to the original point my guess is snobbery. I played a 3 ball rotating using a coloured ball and the amount of people who saw it and laughed or said something like "you'd better be good playing with one of those" was pretty much everyone. Personally I find the white ball tough to see on a cloudy day but wouldn't use a yellow one for these reasons even though I use Z-Stars.

Strixon make a AD-333 in orange which is a decent ball and Titlest make a NXT-Tour in yellow too so I guess it is only a matter of time until they become more commonplace.

I do know someone who plays with white Z-Stars then if he needs a provo uses a yellow one to eliminate any doubt. See, tied both bits together!

Good conjoined themes!

On the coloured golf ball sketch I see that callaway hex chrome+ do yellow. Anyone have experience of them (white or yellow)? Read a golfwrx review saying the durability isn't up to much but they're very good value and spinny to boot.

twoeightnine wrote:Ray, I play in a bit of matchplay and I like to know what someone is using.  Just the other day after someone had hit two in to the same area and I found one.  I asked him what he was using and he couldn't remember the number.  We then found both and while they were different numbers we didn't know which was which and had only he found them had to take his word that it was the first one.  It didn't matter in the end but it made me wonder.

In the case of a yellow Donnay 1, probably not a big issue.

Back to the original point my guess is snobbery.  I played a 3 ball rotating using a coloured ball and the amount of people who saw it and laughed or said something like "you'd better be good playing with one of those" was pretty much everyone.  Personally I find the white ball tough to see on a cloudy day but wouldn't use a yellow one for these reasons even though I use Z-Stars.

Strixon make a AD-333 in orange which is a decent ball and Titlest make a NXT-Tour in yellow too so I guess it is only a matter of time until they become more commonplace.

I do know someone who plays with white Z-Stars then if he needs a provo uses a yellow one to eliminate any doubt.  See, tied both bits together!

I caddied for my mate at Scotscraig in final qualifying for the Open in 2005, he was playing with an English amateur (can't remember his name) and a club pro from Liverpool called Neil Price.  Coming towards the end of the 2nd round none of the 3 of them were scoring particularly well and certainly weren't in contention to qualify (only top 3 from each venue got in).  The 16th hole is a tight dog-leg right par 5 with the tee-shot partially blind and bushes (and an ob fence) all the way up the right.  Price hit his tee shot up the right into the bushes and then hit a provisional into the exact same place; I got there first and found a ball pretty quickly and it was the same make and markings as his first ball.  Unfortunately his provisional ball had been marked identically (same number as well) and we only found 1 of them.  He got a rules official in who said that as he couldn't say whether the ball was his first ball or his provisional then the only option was to declare both balls lost and go back and play 5 off the tee; not surprisingly he said "sod that" and effectively nr'd/withdrew.  Ever since then I've always ensured that if I hit a provisional it's different in some way to the original, just in case, and in the case described above the same ruling should have applied.

Roller,

I've played the Chrome + also the Chrome and Black from Callaway. The original Chrome is supposedly the Pro V1 equivalent with the Black being the Pro V1x. The Chrome + is supposed to sit somewhere between the two. I really like the Chrome +. Good distance, spin, and control. The + was great around the greens and it's nice off of the putter too. They can scuff quite a bit but that's mostly 'cos I've bounced one off of a cart path. Can't comment on the yellow version as I've only played white.

I know the yellow versions of the NXT and Solo are really easy to follow in flight. I was about 30 yards behind someone teeng off on the first and I was able to follow the flight all the way to the fairway including bounce and run. I don't think they'll be as useful now with the anount of leaves starting to come down.

Cheers 1GG, I might give them a go then, that sounds like they sit about where I like a ball (Pro V1x 95% of the time but I'm no brand lady of loose morals and do like an annoying yellow number to throw in the mix and a bit more spin might be useful, but not too much).

Only got one sleeve of Yellow Z-Stars left so the time might be right to broaden/deepen the colour options available in my collection of premium balls to hit into adjoining fields/trees/cabbage.

I still don't see the need to declare what ball you are playing before hitting it. As long as you can tell your partners what you are playing as you trudge towards the cabbage surely that's enough? "My first ball is a Donnay 1, provisional is a pinnacle, 2nd provisional a yellow range ball".

I guess it comes down to how serious you take competition. In a matchplay knockout last year my opponent sliced 2 tee shots into a hedge on our 12th. When we got there, one was in a ditch and one was lost. He thought his first ball was in the ditch but they were from the same sleeve and he had no marking to say which was which. Now I could have told him that as he couldn't identify his ball he had to return to the tee, but I said to him that if he thought the ball in the ditch was his original ball I would trust his honesty and accept his decision. It's inevitable what happened next: I hit a perfect drive, lovely 5 iron into the green and 2 putts for par, he took a drop next to the ditch and of course hit a career 3 wood to 6 foot and rolled in the putt for par nett birdie to win the hole.

Now that would have really pi$$ed me off Ray! I would like to think that I would have done the same as you especially if I was comfortably up...not so sure that I would have been quite so generous if the match was tight or I was a couple of holes down! Did you go on to win the match?

Blue,

I was one down at the time, had fought back from 3 down and momentum was with me. So instead of getting back to all square I found myself 2 down with 6 to play, it was a pivotal moment in the match and I lost 2&1.... Would I do the same again? Yes it's only a game!