Best Golf Ball Hunting Day Ever

[WalkTheCourse]

Hawk's Landing Golf Course... a decent public course in Southington, CT.

Much of the course is quiet, but the 3rd, 5th, and 14th holes are directly parallel and adjacent to Interstate 84, one of CT's three major highways. There's a tall fence separating the property from the highway, so if you hit your ball over or through it, you're not getting it back.

And then this afternoon, commuting home on I-84 from nearby Prospect, the idea hit me...

*pulls over*
*grabs ball retriever and a plastic bag*

It was a diamond mine waiting to be harvested. The hunt was on! Pro V1s, B330s, Vapor Blacks, even a few of my own ball, the xFIXx. Maybe I was the one who hit them over the fence in the first place? I grabbed every ball I could find... at worst, they'd be hitaways at the range.

I musta come out of the shallow woods with 50 balls in 10 minutes.

It's times like this that make me wonder why I spend so much on golf balls... I mean, I'll play my xFIXx if it's a serious round, but if I'm just kicking about, I might as well just play someone else's bad slice.

[Wheels309]

Nice find!

Reminds me of when my high school team was playing a course as a practice round for our district tournament. The course was going through some design changes which included changing one of the ponds they had on the course. The large pond was drained resulting in hundreds of balls just sitting there. I think the 5 of us ended up with around 40 golf balls each in the few minutes we looked. Luckily this was on the 2nd to last hole we played that day because our bags were pretty heavy by time we were done.

[WalkTheCourse]

Similar experience to yours at a course in Tolland CT. Not only did they drain a small pond, they actually dug a ton of mud and dirt out of the bottom. The resulting piles were a sight to see - loads of dirt speckled with golf balls. It was like panning for gold, LOL...

And yes, the one problem with golf ball hunting is having to lug your bag around for the rest of the round. That's why I always search as late in the round as possible... or in this case, when I'm DRIVING BY... hehe.

[MAINUH]

I did a major addition to a house in New Canaan, CT a number of years ago that was adjacent to the fairway of a hole at New Canaan CC. Every morning I took the customers dogs for a walk along side the hole and would walk out with a half dozen balls or so.

I've always been reluctant to purchase used balls online as I've read articles about balls retrieved from ponds, etc.

There once was a great golf forum - Ham and Egg - and a member there who was a ball hawk had written a primer on retrieving lost balls.  IIRC one tip was to follow streams and look where they took a turn. The majority of balls seemed to get caught up there.