Can stupid be fixed?

[trackster]

I am about +15-20 on golf balls found this summer vs. golf balls lost.  My bag is filling up rather fast and It seems like I am finding 2-3 balls almost every round.  I only pick them up if I am sure they are lost, but with 15 groups being as busy as it will ever get at my local municipal and most days I am one of a dozen people on the course most balls are clearly abandoned.  I'm not finding these balls in trees or buried in super deep rough either.  Many are barely into the cut of rough.  I can't for the life of me realize how these balls are not found.  Then I had an interesting run in last night that explained to me why so many golf balls are lost.  Hole 6 is perpendicular to hole 1 at my home course.  I hit my tee shot on hole 1 and walk up to it in the fairway.  I get over my ball am ready to hit and all of a sudden I hear a yell, "Did you see a ball come this way?"  I couldn't believe that they would ask as I am addressing my ball but I gave them the benefit of the doubt that they didn't know and I told them I did not.  I addressed again, hit my shot, and gave a glance back.  This guy was playing hole number 6.  The fairway on this hole goes straight for about 270 yards then doglegs right.  If you continue to go straight through the fairway there is about 50 yards of rough between where hole 6's fairway ends and hole ones starts.  Instead of looking in this rough area.  The man drives his golf cart up and down hole number 1's fairway, which would be about a 330 yard drive.  To make the situation more interesting he drives all the way across hole #1's into the rough on the other side.  Which would be about a 380-400 yard tee shot.  I didn't stick around to see if he ever did find the ball.  While there is a chance he was looking for his second shot, I highly doubt it because that would mean he had miss the target on his second by over 100 yards left.  There was a female riding with him that wasn't playing so maybe he was trying to impress I'm not sure.

I always find it funny that people immediately look in the 300+ range when in all reality there shot is more in the 200 range.  Oh well, free golf balls for me.

[Lihu]

My playing partners lost a few in the sub-200 range, and were looking in the 280 range. Then they would go back and find some of them. I saw quite a few from the party in front of us leave balls. I don't think its stupidity, in our cases it was the sun in our eyes syndrome. You can't see where you're driving them. If you were behind us you would have found quite a few.

[Zachari208]

A: No

[Slicer219]

I just finished up with a twilight round this evening. I was helping my playing partner look for his ball in the rough just off the fairway, we'd probably been looking for two minutes tops and the course was completely clear behind us. All of a sudden out of nowhere a ball lands in a tree about 10 feet in front of us. There were a couple guys out on a cart bouncing around holes and when they saw they hit into us they just took off and abandoned their ball, didn't see them the rest of the time we were out... so no, cant fix stupid.

[Lihu]

Sometimes people don't know how far they are driving in a golf cart, so they lose perspective of the distances they travel.

[MS256]

I didn't even know a person had to be very smart to have a pretty good idea how far the ball went just going by how it was hit.

For me, if I miss left it's probably a hook and probably fairly short and if I miss right it's probably my longest shot of the day.

[Slicer219]

Sometimes people don't know how far they are driving in a golf cart, so they lose perspective of the distances they travel.

Agree... I've always had an easier time tracking my shots when I walk.

[David in FL]

Not according to Ron White.......!

[hendog]

I've had days where I keep finding the same type of ball in the middle of the fairway I am playing. I've come to the conclusion that someone in front of me has a hole in their bag or otherwise has left it open. Its nice when they're Pro V1s. Not so nice when its Top Rocks.

As for over estimating distances. I really don't ever think about how far it might have gone because if its not in the fairway I've most likely mishit it so who knows plus it might hit a tree and go anywhere. Running through doglegs I guess is different but I will not have picked a club that will go 100 yards through the dogleg :)

I always go to where I last saw it for certain (a tree, bush, fence line whatever) and go from there. Usually I'm right on because I have good eyes but sometimes if its blind then who knows. I've been way to far and way to short. I almost lost out on a par a few weeks ago because my ball was 60 yards past where we were looking with a clear shot to the green.

Good tip: Get the sun at your back when looking. That way you see the glimmer of the ball and not a shadow. So if sun is in front of you, go as far as reasonably possible and work backwards and vice versa. Super tall grass is a little tougher obviously but in general this works great.

[NotPortlyNJ]

Well just the other day, the 1 ball I lost on my local course was NOT lost in the water (as it usually is) but when I sliced my drive on #4.  I KNOW I saw it slice right, and the rough on that side is far from unplayable (in fact I've become pretty good at recovering from that area :( ), but for the life of me I could not find my ball the other day.  I walked out about 250 yards ( well beyond how far a sliced ball would have gone), and since nobody was behind for a couple of holes, I walked BACK to the tee box to hit #3, and still did not find my ball.

Well, I like to THINK I'm not stupid.

[Lihu]

Agree... I've always had an easier time tracking my shots when I walk.

I agree. Walking is the main reason I get to play.

[Michael Lee]

Can stupid be fixed?  Probably not, but there is nothing wrong with being stupid - is there?

[Wally]

I have this problem, only it's my eyesight. My depth perception is pretty bad. If it's not clearly visible and obvious of where my ball landed, I will sometimes end up looking longer or shorter due to my lack of good depth perception.

[Slicer219]

Originally Posted by Michael Lee

Can stupid be fixed?  Probably not, but there is nothing wrong with being stupid - is there?

There's nothing wrong with being ignorant, I'll be the first to admit I'm ignorant on all sorts of topics and issues.  Being stupid however, well... not much you can do for a person there but to just stay the hell out of their way... Lol.  I think what the OP was trying to get at is he's finding all sorts of ball that should have been easily located had the person who hit it had the common sense to know where to look.  I've hit several shots where i missed it coming off the tee or where i'm playing over a blind hill or something.  9 times out of 10 I'll still find the ball because I know the distance I generally hit and unfortunately how bad i generally slice it (hence the name).  Just leaving a ball laying because you're looking 100+ yards away from where you should be looking... don't know if I'd go so far as to call that stupid, but it would be close...

[GaijinGolfer]

Originally Posted by Slicer219

There's nothing wrong with being ignorant, I'll be the first to admit I'm ignorant on all sorts of topics and issues.  Being stupid however, well... not much you can do for a person there but to just stay the hell out of their way... Lol.  I think what the OP was trying to get at is he's finding all sorts of ball that should have been easily located had the person who hit it had the common sense to know where to look.  I've hit several shots where i missed it coming off the tee or where i'm playing over a blind hill or something.  9 times out of 10 I'll still find the ball because I know the distance I generally hit and unfortunately how bad i generally slice it (hence the name).  Just leaving a ball laying because you're looking 100+ yards away from where you should be looking... don't know if I'd go so far as to call that stupid, but it would be close...

Id prefer stupid over ignorant.  Ignorance is a choice.  If someone just isnt all that smart, thats cool and you cant really hate on them for it.  However, if someone has intelligence and just chooses to be ignorant, thats just sad.

[MS256]

Originally Posted by GaijinGolfer

Id prefer stupid over ignorant.  Ignorance is a choice.  If someone just isnt all that smart, thats cool and you cant really hate on them for it.  However, if someone has intelligence and just chooses to be ignorant, thats just sad.

All of us are ignorant about topics that we care nothing about, have never heard of, or been exposed to.

I've always had dangerous jobs. New people are always ignorant. The intelligent ones can get by as they learn. The stupid ones will get you killed.

I'll take an ignorant person any day over a stupid one.

[David in FL]

Originally Posted by MS256

All of us are ignorant about topics that we care nothing about, have never heard of, or been exposed to.

I've always had dangerous jobs. New people are always ignorant. The intelligent ones can get by as they learn. The stupid ones will get you killed.

I'll take an ignorant person any day over a stupid one.

+1.  Ignorance is simply a lack of knowledge.  That can be fixed.

[iacas]

I agree with the last two posts. Also, there's a big difference between ignorance and willful ignorance.