Shiny Balls

I played a scramble tournament with the ladies league yesterday (my team won). One of the fun add-ons was a game called Mystery Ball. Each team was given a blue Nike Mojo ball, which had to be played by a different player on each hole. The object was not to lose the ball -- not such an easy task, since it was a dark, matte blue and definitely hard to spot against green grass. All teams who still had the blue ball at the end of the tournament would be entered in a raffle for a prize. Turned out, my team was the only one that didn't lose their ball, so we won the raffle by default.

Speaking of balls of color, one of the women on my team showed up with the most blinged-out balls I've ever seen. The silver ball is from the Lynx brand, the same maker of a beloved $16 sand wedge I once had. The gold ball is made by Chromax, a specialist in metallic balls of color. I must say that the silver ball was easier to spot in the grass than any golf ball I've ever seen. Maybe it's because they shine like a light, which is the opposite of those matte golf balls I tried out recently.

I think I'm gonna have to try out these metallic, high-visibility golf balls for myself some day. Because finding one's balls should never be a mystery.

(P.S. Nike discontinued its Mojo balls, so now those blue balls will be almost impossible to find.)

Orange You Glad...?

So I tried out the new Volvik Vivid orange balls. As you may know, I like playing with color balls (or "balls of color," as I like to say) because they're fun. When you're playing a ball of color, it takes the guesswork out of who blasted that tee shot furthest down the fairway when everyone else is playing a boring old white ball. I've been playing the hot pink Callaway Supersoft and the tour yellow Srixon Soft Feel balls for a few years now, but a few weeks ago, I noticed that another lady in my golf league plays the same pink ball, and a few others play yellow balls. So I thought I'd try out another ball in a color no one has. This led me to the Volvik Vivid orange ball.

I've played with Volvik Crystal balls before, and I found them too pastel and glittery to be easy to find on the course. But the Volvik Vivid balls are the first-ever ball with a matte finish. And the color promised to be, well, vivid.

The verdict? Well, they have a compression of 80, which is higher than my usual pink and yellow balls, and I did notice the change in feel. They didn't roll out as much on my driver shots, leading to less distance. But they did feel grippier around the greens. I felt my putts were easier to control and rolled somewhat truer. However, the matte finish made them seem to attract and hold dirt more, so if any mud got on the ball (and lately it's been rainy and muddy out there), I had to spend more time cleaning the ball once I got on the green.

And what about the promise of greater visibility? Yes, they are more visible, almost glaringly, annoyingly so -- once you can actually see them. On the course, from a distance, these orange balls actually seem less visible than white or yellow balls. Perhaps it's due to the matte finish, which absorbs light instead of reflecting it.

On the plus side, if you can spot the orange ball in the distance, you will never mistake it for something else, the way you sometimes do with white balls. (How many times have we been given false hope, spotting something light-colored in the rough, only to find that it's just a crumpled receipt or piece of trash?) So unless you're playing in a grove of trees bearing tiny citrus fruits, the Volvik Vivid orange ball will solve at least that common problem.