Breaking down the astronomic estimates of lost golf balls each year
The number of lost golf balls in water hazards around the world might astound even the most seasoned and avid golfers you play with every week at your home club.
Take even the professional game, for example. Thousands of people tune in to watch the Masters each April, and watch the world’s best players plunge balls into Rae’s Creek on a regular basis.
Ponds and lakes are among the most common traps used by golf course architects to gobble up your balls, initially never to be seen again. A golfer might not just lose one golf ball during a round, they can lose several.
The estimates of these balls that you presume are gone for good are staggering, but also demonstrate the continuous effort to recycle them back through the game in the form of lake balls.
In 2023, according to the United States Golf Association (USGA), a record of 45 million people played golf. In addition, there were another 31.6 million people who were unregistered and registered golfers across 146 countries in 2023, according to the R&A.
Given just the number of people who pick up a club and play the game, Torben Kastrup Petersen, the current head of course management for the Danish Golf Union, once pondered to CNN that the figure of lost golf balls around the world could be in the billions each year.
There are many different environments where golf balls can find themselves:
· Coastal Areas: Around coastal regions, golf balls can tend to wash up on beaches with the presence of plastic and rubber materials in the balls, which can pose threats to marine life and animals.
· Landfills: As lost golf balls eventually make their way to landfills, it has become a growing waste problem. Issues regarding this can be related to landfill overflow and pollution.
· Water Bodies: One of the most common places for a lost golf ball to end up. Golf courses often feature ponds, streams and lakes, making it easy for errant shots to reside in water. By this, it can lead to harmful chemicals like zinc and other metals in these areas.
· Golf Course Ecosystems: Many golf courses have wooded areas, bushes and roughs, and they can disrupt these natural environments.
In 2017, a teenage diver named Alex Weber was beneath the surface off the coast of Pebble Beach in California, where she encountered a seabed covered in little white spheres. Having collected 10,000 balls, there was more to come.
She eventually reached out to a researcher at Stanford University and contributed to a paper about marine pollution. The case of Pebble Beach just demonstrates the scale of the sport, how many people play it, but also the staggering number of golf balls that cover the circumference of the earth without anyone knowing.
Over two years, Pebble Beach employees joined the effort to sweep the seabed of golf balls and collected over 50,000 in two years.
Outside of the USA, drastic estimates are put on balls lost to the sea in large golf markets such as Japan, South Korea, England, Germany and Australia. Mitchell Schols, founder of Canada-based Biodegradable Golf Balls, guesses around 100,000 in each nation.
In 2021, Golf Datatech estimated that 320 million balls were lost around the world.
While the scale might shock you, the numbers are important. Lost golf balls have a significant impact towards the environment, as traditional golf balls are crafted from synthetic materials like rubber, plastic and metal, and they can take up to centuries to decompose.
Through vast reach and a rigorous redistribution process, Mail Order Golf processes up to 60,000 balls a day, and a conservative estimate would suggest 170 million golf balls in over 30 years in operation.
Second Chance launched the world’s first environmentally friendly golf range ball in 2022, made of 85% recycled Surlyn and thermal plastic.
The sheer number of golf balls lost to water hazards and oceans each year emphasises not only the need to maintain the circular life of golf balls, but also to produce alternatives when they are hit and never seen again.