How many golf balls have you lost?

[GolfSpy_APH]

No shame, no judgement, we all have terrible rounds and seemingly go through most our stock of golf balls, but what's the most you can recall? 

Have you ever actually run out?

About 2 years ago I played a new course where the rough was 3 feet high hay. My driver was bad and I burned through at least 14 golf balls... It was a disaster 

 

[Off Map Oscar]

Lost 8 one round. Water had my name that day. 

[Shankster]

I used to lose a lot, I think I lost 10 or more on Greywalls one round and probably more when I was younger.  I really dislike that course.  Haha.  Now I can go 2-3 rounds without donating one.  Now that I’ve said that I’m sure my donations will go up.

[sirchunksalot]

I once lost 6 balls on one hole during the Classic Bag Challenge I held in 2020. I kept topping the ball into a small pond not too far in front of the tee box and instead of going out and dropping, I kept teeing them up and hitting them because I'm both stubborn and not too smart. My only consolation was that I was playing Wilson Zip balls and they were something like $20 for 2 dozen. 

 

[DrMJG]

Most 11 for 18 holes.  Bad day all around!  Most due to horrible slice!!! But in my defense was in my early days of golf. 

[Mac attack]

6 brand new Chrome Softs in one round…finished the game on a ball I found in the woods. Ouch

[B_R_A_D_Y]

9 brand new balls … IN 9 HOLES!!!! But it wasn’t me, it was my golf league partner who hits the ball a mile, but often sprays it … and every week he breaks out a new dozen balls.
 

For me: 7 … but I actually found 8 on the same round. It was fall, rough was left long & leaves everywhere. 

Edited September 22 by B_R_A_D_Y

[TJ Hall]

Since I’ve been tracking stats, my number is 6…but I’m sure it would be more than that in my early days of golf.

just wasn’t really a number I focused on at the time (forget the bad things!!!). 

[Pfaugh]

A normal round for me is usually one or two but last year we went to Vietnam and played 12 different courses over a six week span. Knowing that I lose at least one or two balls per round you would figure 12 rounds, three or four dozen should be fine to take along. The first couple rounds were fine, I gave my usual donation to the Golf Gods, but later in the trip, the courses seem to get a little tougher and a little narrower and a little more water and the donations went from one or two up to five or six, peeking at nine brand new Pro V1s. So needless to say my calculations went out the window and I went to the Golf store to buy more balls in order to finish the trip.

[Santosh]

My first year on a golf course I would lose 5-6 balls per round. Once I lost 6 balls trying to go over a water hazard at ~190 yards luckily I did not give up! Now a days I have rounds where not even a single ball is lost or 1-2 balls every other round at most.

[Big moose]

I lost 6 balls in one round at whispering woods near erie pa. What the woods were whispering was hit it here, hit it here. Not one of my favorite courses. 

[tony@CIC]

Our group played a new course last week called Waterlefe which is located in Bradenton right on the Manatee River. A few of the holes had very tight fairways including a couple of (semi blind) holes that were all carry. I lost 6 balls but one of my partners lost 12.   

[Wib081]

I had a chance to play Copperhead at Innisbrook in Florida a week after the PODS Championship as it was known then. Well it was during the scramble event my dad and his company put on yearly. Everyone got a dozen Jets or Giants Top-Flites for the event. I put every Jets ball in the thickest rough I’ve ever seen never to be seen again. 3 of us looked on the first hole and after that if it missed the fairway we just moved on . It was hilarious on every tee box it was whack, followed by nope not going after that one! Good times!

[3Putt4Double]

Wow, seeing all these 5s and 6s I'm ashamed lol..I played a wide open course the first few times I played, then my buddies wanted to play a new course with narrow fairways..my banana slice at the time didn't agree with this..lost 14 balls on tee shots that day..I remember the number bc it was every hole that wasn't a par 3..lost two more in a water hazard, so 16 total

[russtopherb]

A few years ago I lost over a dozen at a course outside of Boston where if you were 2 feet off the fairway, you were in rough up to your knees. I finally put away the driver so I wouldn't run out of balls. It was ridiculous.

[Delaware Joe]

Years ago I played Bethpage Black the week before a MGA tournament. The  first cut of rough was 3 inches and the second cut was 6+ inches. I lost at least 12 balls and stopped counting by the 12th hole. The course was brutal and I was probably never more than 10-15 feet off the fairway. A day i will never forget!!

[RetiredBoomer]

5 minutes ago, Delaware Joe said:

Years ago I played Bethpage Black the week before a MGA tournament. The  first cut of rough was 3 inches and the second cut was 6+ inches. I lost at least 12 balls and stopped counting by the 12th hole. The course was brutal and I was probably never more than 10-15 feet off the fairway. A day i will never forget!!

Many, perhaps most, will disagree, but that's not even golf to me.
If all golf were like that, I'd just walk my dog more often.

 

[Shankster]

2 hours ago, RetiredBoomer said:

Many, perhaps most, will disagree, but that's not even golf to me.
If all golf were like that, I'd just walk my dog more often.

 

I played a course called Dunmaglas when I was about 16-17.  It was a very nice course, if you liked waist deep fescue.  There was the fairway, maybe a yard or two of rough then you were screwed.  They have toned it way down since then, but that was probably the worst day of golf I can remember playing.  Partially a faux Links, and then your traditional northern Michigan woodland course.  I played it about 12 years ago, I’d like to get back to see how it has changed.

 

[DaveHH]

An even dozen. Playing alone couldn’t find two in the rough on different holes. 
Two of the same tee - one left into the woods one right into the lake. And so on. 

[VakFrost]

7.

5 water shots and 2 deep into brush.

I had just started golfing and my wife gifted me a 12-pack of Pro V1s for my birthday. It was demoralizing. By hole 9 I stopped using the Pro Vs and switched to the batch of 20+ year old balls my uncle passed down to me. Hit those way better because I wasn't nervous about losing them!

[RoverRick]

I can’t recall, however, it did bring to mind about 10 years ago we had meet up at Mirimichi in Tennessee.  6-8 MGS members. We were going to warm up on their par 3 course. I took dead aim, and hit the green on the second hole. But it was the wrong green, the one I was aiming at but it was the fourth hole. I thought I would just drop off the green and get up and down. I made a 13 on a par 3 with no lost balls or penalties. They thought it was hilarious. I did not. 

What made me think of this, well aside from recurring nightmares about this, was the morning I returned from my first MGS meet up in Canada in 2012, I went immediately from the airport to a course with a different friend. They had no range and I just got off a plane and hit 4 balls into the water off the first tee. I played the rest of the round fine, but that first hole ate my lunch. 

There certainly have been many rounds where I have lost lots of balls, but none come to mind. I guess that therapy is working. 

A couple of weeks ago, I played Black Desert in Utah. They have lava rock instead of weeds. You can’t even walk out to look for a ball because it’s too treacherous. I took an extra dozen balls just in case and had the best driving day of my life. I hit every fairway and didn’t lose a single ball. I didn’t adjust to the higher altitude and didn’t hit many greens, and never got close to the hole with the chips, but still didn’t lose a ball. 

[RetiredBoomer]

I sometimes lose water balls hitting into greens,
which isn't as bad
because you don't waste any time looking for them.

I don't lose many balls from the tee
because I hit a long iron on scary driving holes,
and those ugly line drives are pretty straight [which is why I hit them].

I'm brave into greens and cautious off the tee,
largely because I really don't like being out of a hole on the first shot.

I need to see wide open spaces before the headcover  comes off my driver.

[The TXBexar]

Around me up here in Dallas, most of the public courses seem to follow the same idea of fairway cut, 2' of 3" rough cut, then "Screw you, good luck" cut for everything out side of that. 

Add in the trees and brush that grow wild on the edges of all these 45yd wide fairways, I always plan on leaving 12 pretty much every round I play unfortunately. 

Only times I don't leave double-digits on the course is when I play Tension Parks Glen course here in Dallas. That's because it's an old 1920's course that's truly walk off the green and step onto the next tee box, so all the holes are right next to each other, doesn't even have any Sand Bunkers on the course!

But it does have White Rock Creek cutting through 10 of the 18 fairways though, so I usually donated about 4-6 per round because Im too hard heard and can't let a damn creek beat me in golf lol.

[TTruax]

I went through a box of Red Callaway Chorm Soft. YES!  I lost all of them and there was four in the group.  When I bought them, I din't think about red/green color blindness.  That combined with soft fairway conditions (probably lost 5 due to plugging), lead to my worst day for losing golf balls.  I wish I never bought those red golf balls. 

[Gene Hull]

Lost 12 balls on a course with water on 16 holes. Early in my career, but my bag got a lot lighter

[Chris1putt]

Well let's see...... Wolf Creek was the most hungry golf course I've played. I went through 12 brand new ProV 1's and 3 ProV's. Water, OB and wherever else there was to lose a ball. Very humbling. Lol

[RemingtonR]

At the beginning of this year I lost 12 in one round lol, I got a bit stubborn and irritated so I just kept trying to make it over a stream and lost 4 on that one hole alone. I made sure to have at least 12 balls for my rounds since then but haven't lost nearly as many. The drought in Ohio hadn't helped with everything turning brown, trying to find balls against a brown background is not fun. 

[RyanGi]

My home course has a lot of wild area OB, and my driver is like a heat seeker for those areas. Must confess I’ve run out of 12 ‘good’ balls and had to finish with the sacrificial water balls I leave in the bottom of the bag…which I seem to hit better since I don’t care. 
 

I was actually really surprised when I played the local muni a while back (walked into an unknown-to-me tourney at the home course…so skittered over to the muni for a round). it’s a small course with the holes pretty much back to back. Don’t think I lost a single ball on the front 9, and maybe only 2 on the back! I felt like I knew what I was doing! It helps when there’s almost no high grass and very little water on a course…

Back to the home course a few days after and the heat seeker hadn’t lost a step…lost maybe three balls in the first few holes. Doh!