500 Golf Balls In The School Pool

I know you're probably wondering what in the heck does 500 golf balls have to do with a pool. Well a year after I graduated from Edison High School in Huntington Beach, CA my brother was graduating. As a senior everyone tries to think of something unique to do as a senior prank.

If you've been following my posts you know that me and my brother used to rake golf balls from the lakes at golf courses at night. We did this to make a little extra money by selling them back to the golfers. Over the years we had accumulated quite a few cut-up golf balls that were only good for shag balls. We probably had close to 750 of these shag golf balls in our garage.

Well my brother decided as a senior prank that the night before graduation he would take about 500 of these shag balls and dump them into the 12-foot deep diving pool. Boy did the faculty personnel get upset with that prank. I remember they threatened to not graduate the person or persons responsible for this unless they came forward. They basically pulled out the bluff card because there was no way they were going to find out because my brother pulled this off by himself so no one knew about it... not even me until a few days later when he told me.

I can't imagine how much of a pain that was to clean all of those golf balls from the pool. I wonder if it clogged any of the filters. Anyway, I thought it was pretty damn funny because that following weekend I went back to the high school to take a peek at the pool... and the golf balls were all over the bottom. There even some of those old-school orange hi-visibility golf balls that stuck out like a sore thumb.

Do you have any unique high school pranks to share?
Tag: golf, golf story

Golf Balls Love The Warmth

I learned an interesting fact about golf balls the other day that all golfers should be aware of.

It takes about 8 to 10 hours for a golf ball to be completely affected by the weather/temperature. So it's important to keep your golf balls in a warm and controlled temperature environment like your house.

Keeping them in your house before you go to the golf course will give you an edge on those cold golf days. I know we've all played in the cold and the feeling of miss-hitting that cold hard golf ball is something we all dread, but if you keep your golf balls warm before you play then that miss-hit won't feel as bad.

Also, when you're putting the ball it will feel more natural coming off the putter face instead of feeling like a piece of granite. This is especially true for the already hard two-piece balls like the extra distance Top-flite type of golf balls.

So just remember to keep those balls in a warm place and not in the trunk of your car overnight. You'll thank me the next time you're playing on a cold day!
Tag: golf, golf tips, golf instruction

Scrimpin For Golf Balls

In one of my previous posts I talked about me and my brother selling used golf balls to golfers on the weekends, but what I didn't mention is how we turned it into a small used golf ball business. We initially started out selling the used golf balls that would come over the fence surrounding the golf course. We then took it to the next level and decided to go where the real money was... in the lakes inside the golf course. Of course this was something that had to be done at night because we knew the golf course wouldn't approve of us taking a dip in their lakes during the day to get the experienced golf balls.

I still remember my first experience going into the lake at Meadowlark Golf Course in Huntington Beach. We wore our two piece wetsuits to keep us warm because the water and air at night was pretty cold. The bottom of the golf course lake was slimy with the mud oozing between my toes and there where crawdads as well. We made up a name for what we were doing called scrimpin. Scrimpin to us was crouching down and feeling with your hands and feet for the used golf balls along the banks under the water. We'd stuff them into the long tube socks we'd bring to carry the golf balls in.

Now there were a couple of hazards in scrimping; 1) the crawdads where very protective of the banks and now then you'd get pinched on your hand or foot. I sometimes wondered if they were protecting the used golf balls as well; 2) while scrimping we were always freaked out by what could be in the lake and we were always on the look out for "The Creature From The Black Lagoon." You know how kids are with their imaginations; and; 3) the golf course maintenance guys would occasionally come by the lake. This required us to take drastic measures. We would have to go under the water and hold our breath until they went by. Let me tell you... that water was pretty disgusting and I'm surprised we didn't get sick from it.

On a good night we would get about 60 experienced golf balls of which half were good enough to sell back to the golfers. We'd go 2 or 3 times during the week and clean them up Friday night so we'd be ready for Saturday and Sunday mornings at the golf course. We asked the neighbors to keep their empty egg cartons and give them to us. We used these as a way to present and sell a dozen of the used golf balls at a time with each dozen being of one brand like Titleist, MaxFli, Topflite, etc... A dozen golf balls would sell for $6 and we'd typically have 6 to 10 dozen for sale. So on a good weekend we could make $30 a piece, which made us feel rich having that kind of money in our pocket.

After about six months of scrimpin we decided that there had to be a better way to get the golf balls out of the lakes. And sure enough we found a better way and created an ingenious device that would do just that. My next post I'll describe in detail how me and my brother could have made millions with this device.