Ball came back to me!

I'm sort of a cheapskate in regard to golf balls and don't like to lose them unless they've made it through a full round, after which I no longer care. Not sure why this is, as I have four dozen brand new ones in my shed, but it is what it is.

We had a men's club tournament yesterday, and when I arrived at the course a guy I play with frequently gave me about 10 of his range balls to warm up with. I hit those with a 7-iron and then decided I wanted to hit a single shot with a driver. I rifled through the pocket in which I keep balls I find on the course for just that reason and didn't have any, and there were no leftovers from other people lying around. If I was going to swat one with the big club, I had to use a "good" ball.

Out of the six or seven I had in my main ball pocket, I decided to sacrifice a Bridgestone e6 that had only a few holes worth of experience on it. It was one of two I'd been given by the Bridgestone ball-fitter a couple of weeks ago and I'd marked it with my three dots in a triangle pattern around the label on each side, signifying the letter A (my daughter's name is Alyson).

Well, I went back to the course this evening to hit a small bucket on the range, and that e6 was one of the 30 balls the machine spit out for me. I was more than pleasantly surprised!

I've "donated" dozens of well-worn balls with my mark on them to the range in the past and I'm pretty sure I'd never gotten one of them out of the machine. I don't know how many balls the machine holds, but it's well into the thousands, for sure.

I think I'll hold onto that e6 and use it in the club championship qualifier next month – maybe it's got some good juju in it.

Then again, maybe it's bent on paying me back for sending it out with all those crummy range balls while it was still in prime condition.

Guess I'll find out one way or the other.