Re: Refinished golf balls??

Some are fine, some are not.

Some are sandblasted and repainted - these are not OK, as the dimples are shallowed out.

Some are simply collected, hit with a high-pressure wash and resold. These are fine, especially the 'mint', 'AAAA', and other top of the line variety.

Re: Refinished golf balls??

I agree with LowPost42.

I have purchased many of these "found" balls.

One lot I ordered was supposedly mint, AAAA. But, when you see them, you would wonder. The balls were sparkingly bright, freshly repainted with a almost lacquered shine to them. However, there are pit marks under the paint surface and raised spots (like when you have a particle under the paint you applied on your walls). It seems to me the balls could have originally been old, faded, waterstained, damaged balls, which you would find and chuck back into the woods.

I would have preferred that they were not repainted, but nearly new "mint", so you could at least see the "true" condition of the original ball. You see these often at the desk of the proshop, some with logos, but many are of the "one hit" variety. I've purchased these latter ones, and I have no problem with them.

Ted

Re: Refinished golf balls??

I bought some Titleist re-finished balls. After a couple of rounds the ball split, I bought a dozen this happened with three of them so I gave the other 9 away.

Maybe this was a bad batch I dont know, but I havn't bought any since

Re: Refinished golf balls??


I too bought some titlist refinished of e bay . they seemed fine at first but on closer inspection they seemed lighter than others, they also vanished into the trees faster.

Re: Refinished golf balls??

Would have to echoe what others have said. Unless you buy the AAA or mint ones they are not that good. I suppose they are not that bad when you first start playing, losing balls all over the place.

For a decent cheap ball I would recommened the Srixon AD333 (£15 a dozen) or the Titelist NXT Extreme (£20 a dozen) - Top notch balls and they dont break the bank!!

Re: Refinished golf balls??

One of the golf magazines made a test some years back.

They took nets with a dozen balls or so in each and placed them in a water hazard over a period of time, so that they at the end of the test had batches of balls that had been in water from 6 hours to 6 months (or something like that).

The conclusion was that golf balls are porous. The cover is a permeable membrane, so water gets into the core which alters the density of the core and changes the characteristics of the ball completely.

If you are just beginning to play golf, lake balls or refurbished balls can be fine. At that level, it's more important to have balls available, than to have the RIGHT ball available.
But as soon as you begin to play golf based on a fairly accurate assesment of distances and need to know how far you hit the ball and how it behaves upon landing, lake balls will hurt your game.

In the test, the balls deviated in distance by up to almost 15%. The longer the ball had been in the water, the worse of course, but already after 6 hours the consistency was affected.
Even worse, already after 6 hours, the balls stop rolling true, making them useless for putting and causing irregular flight.

Lake balls will hurt your game even more, because if you don't know that the ball is to blame, you will think YOU are to blame, which will hurt your mental game. It might also lead you to adjust your swing or putting stroke, trying to compensate for a behaviour your can never succesfully adjust to, since it's irregular.

Lake balls are for people "trying out" golf.

If you are a "golfer", your game will benefit from playing "new" balls, and preferably the same type of ball every shot.
Good "cheapish" balls like the AD333 or the NXT Extreme mentioned above will really be worth it.

Remember this, next time your playing partner brags about having found 3 Pro V1 balls last round. They're not what they used to be!

Re: Refinished golf balls??

I used to play in the evenings after outside company tournaments held at my private club. We had a lot of woods and a creek which wound through the course. If you could see balls in the creek within reach of a retriever, it was from that tournament. Also, the ones along the borders of woods were one hit wonders. I used to find dozens of balls. These balls were OK to use for casual play. The ones half buried in the muck, I did not bother with. I used new balls for tournaments.

Ted