Blue Balls

I realize the title of this blog post could be construed as provocative. But get your mind out of the gutter. I am about to write, quite literally, about blue balls. Not that it's easy to talk about blue balls without creating an air of discomfort.

For example, at Golf Galaxy the other day, I brought a box of multi-colored Callaway Supersoft balls to the checkout counter, opened it to show the neon blue, orange, yellow and plain white shades, and asked the clerk, without double entendre intended, "Have you heard any complaints about these blue balls?"

   The man looked at me with a straight face and said, "No."
   "Because I've been seeing a lot of these blue balls and was just wondering if you'd gotten any feedback on them," I said.
   "No, I didn't even know we had blue balls," said the man.
   The woman at the counter looked at the man, and then at me, as if to scan our faces for any realization of the absurdity of this dialogue exchange. The absurdity had gone unnoticed to me, until later, when my husband (who had been standing next to me at the store) told me that I should probably never speak of blue balls in mixed company again.

But I wondered about blue balls. I mean, grass is green and the sky is typically blue and it didn't seem logical to use a golf ball that would blend in with either background. But then again, these Callaway balls were neon blue. Maybe they were more visible than a regular blue?

Anyway, I bought the blue balls, along with its multi-colored compatriots, plus a box of 12 neon pink balls of the same brand. Having recently read that it's good to have a low-compression winter ball to give one's golf game some pep in the cold weather, and having discovered that the Callaway Supersoft have the lowest compression numbers in the market -- 38 of whatever units compression is measured in -- I bought these balls, and I bought them in various colors to give me extra cheer along with, hopefully, extra yardage.

So did the blue balls pan out? Well, no. In fact, they were an epic fail. Sunday, temps warmed up enough for even hubby to golf with me. I was able to hit a blue ball off the tee, and it went sailing, but I could not see it at all in the fairway till I was about three feet away from it.

I switched to the Callaway pink ball for the remainder of the round. These worked well, giving me good visibility and distance and straighter shots with less spin, as advertised, though it is true about the loss of control around the greens, where you're supposed to want more spin on occasion. And when I hit the pink balls a number of times, they seemed to turn a bit purplish in some spots. But maybe that's just my imagination.

In any case, it is decided. My summer ball is the Srixon Soft Feel in tour yellow (which has a 71 compression), and my winter ball is the Callaway Supersoft in pink. You can even learn some French by reading the box. Somehow, it sounds more polite to say "la plus douce de nos balls" instead of "the softest of our balls." But I digress.

Bottom line -- colored balls are here to stay. Volvik and Nike Mojo even make golf balls in neon green. But given my experience with blue balls, green balls seem like an even less reasonable gambit.