Practicing with hit away or cut balls

[sirhacksalot]

I just purchased a lot of hit away balls. (cut or damaged to be deemed unplayable.) My thought is to use them to hit into the river or woods at a small park near my work during lunch.  I know that since the majority of the balls will have defects ball flight will not be a good identifier so I plan on just using them to work on solid contact and divots in front etc.  As well as using the time to focus on Swing itself. 

Has anyone done this with bad balls?  Will the defects affect feel so much as to possibly cause bad habits? 

[Patch]

My first thought is you might want to check on the legality of hitting golf balls into a river on purpose. 

Damaged balls will fly every which way. some will fly well, some won't. If you are just working on you swing, and impact position, and don't care where the balls are going, it couldn't hurt.  Unless of course, you don't have a flaw in your swing, which you might engrain into your on course swing with out knowing it. 

I know every so often I take good balls out to a dry lake bed and hit them so I can watch the ball flight to see if I am hitting the ball correctly, or almost correctly in my case. A damaged ball can't give the golfer that kind of feedback. I use the dry lake so I can recover the balls, and check my carry yardages..  

[sirhacksalot]

Guy at work says he does it all the time but your right it may be something I should look into a lil more.

And I do get the flight wont be beneficial and yes impact and swing is what I would mainly be using them for

[metbid]

Guy at work says he does it all the time but your right it may be something I should look into a lil more.

And I do get the flight wont be beneficial and yes impact and swing is what I would mainly be using them for

If all you are doing is working on swing mechanics, you might want to invest in a net and hit into it.  Then you can keep re-using them, and the environment will thank you.

[sirhacksalot]

This may go up as one of those "it sounded good until" .  I have a net at home but its not moveable.  The main reason I even thought of this is to be able to work on full swing stuff on my lunch break.  After the comments and actually thinking about it maybe I should just get some rubber or practice balls and hit in the park

[SavvySwede]

This may go up as one of those "it sounded good until" .  I have a net at home but its not moveable.  The main reason I even thought of this is to be able to work on full swing stuff on my lunch break.  After the comments and actually thinking about it maybe I should just get some rubber or practice balls and hit in the park

You don't always need to hit balls to improve your swing. There are plenty of good drills you can do to improve your swing that don't require striking a ball. On another note, you're telling us that somebody out there is selling cut up golf balls? They wouldn't even be worth the shipping costs.

[sirhacksalot]

On another note, you're telling us that somebody out there is selling cut up golf balls? They wouldn't even be worth the shipping costs.

Long story longer, talking to two guys at work that live close I said "one of you guys should get a net so we can hit golf balls on lunch". Then they both mentioned the park and one of them said that if he has old golf balls he just hits them toward the woods over the river. (Don't know why but for some reason that was all the validation I needed to get the idea)

I was on lost golf balls website and in the mix lot section I saw 600 hitaway balls for $12.  I was curious what shipping would be and when I went to calculate it was free plus a $1 discount. So on a fluke ,yeah, 600 coming my way.

 

[SavvySwede]

Long story longer, talking to two guys at work that live close I said "one of you guys should get a net so we can hit golf balls on lunch". Then they both mentioned the park and one of them said that if he has old golf balls he just hits them toward the woods over the river. (Don't know why but for some reason that was all the validation I needed to get the idea)

I was on lost golf balls website and in the mix lot section I saw 600 hitaway balls for $12.  I was curious what shipping would be and when I went to calculate it was free plus a $1 discount. So on a fluke ,yeah, 600 coming my way.

 

Found the sale you're talking about. Makes zero financial sense though, 600 balls is about 60 pounds and a lot of shipping money. Now I think I need to call them to find out the story and understand all of this.

[Mike Boatright]

Just go to the driving range dude.

[sirhacksalot]

Just go to the driving range dude.

I do when I can but unfortunately that is not as often as I would like.  There is not one near my work and it's during my lunch break that I would be doing this.

[ncarlsongolf]

My first thought is you might want to check on the legality of hitting golf balls into a river on purpose. 

Damaged balls will fly every which way. some will fly well, some won't. If you are just working on you swing, and impact position, and don't care where the balls are going, it couldn't hurt.  Unless of course, you don't have a flaw in your swing, which you might engrain into your on course swing with out knowing it. 

I am not sure how legal or not hitting balls into a lake is, however I did take about 50 range balls from a club that was going to get rid of some old ones.  On a camping trip I smashed them all into a huge lake and it was the most peaceful thing ever done with a golf club.  Just puring them into the distance, at sunset, nothing like it.  But, they were still round which sounds like these are not.

I just purchased a lot of hit away balls. (cut or damaged to be deemed unplayable.) My thought is to use them to hit into the river or woods at a small park near my work during lunch.  I know that since the majority of the balls will have defects ball flight will not be a good identifier so I plan on just using them to work on solid contact and divots in front etc.  As well as using the time to focus on Swing itself. 

Has anyone done this with bad balls?  Will the defects affect feel so much as to possibly cause bad habits? 

Don't pay attention to the flight of the ball, but when working on your swing that is where a lot of the intrinsic feedback comes from.  So you are not going to get as much feedback as far as contact as you think.  You can sort of feel the contact sure, but, without having the feedback of seeing the ball fly how you want it to or with the shape of shot that you wanted you are not receiving the feedback you should from practice. I wouldn't recommend it.