Lost Ball Water Hazards vs Water Where You Can Find Your Ball

[Phil Benedict]

I'm curious to know whether if you, like me, are more intimidated by a water hazard where you will lose a ball, such as ANGC 12, 15 and 16, than you are by one where you lose a stroke but find your ball (eg ANGC 13).  What made me think about this is that Augusta put in dams to create ponds out of creeks.

Obviously pros don't care because they don't pay for balls but I hate to lose a $4 golf ball, so ponds are far more vexing to me than creeks.   

[Jerry Kluger]

Phil: your problem is you pay too much for golf balls - buy them used in mint condition and you pay half the price.

[Phil Benedict]

Jerry,

I am less intimidated with an NXT in hand than a Prov1, but that feels like surroundering.

[ed_getka]

Phil,
    You just need to spend more time at expensive courses where people don't even go looking for their golf balls. Then you'll have so many that you'll be hitting Pro V1's at the range just to get rid of the inventory.

[Jim_Kennedy]

Phil,
Just think of how much more than $4.00 that Pro stands to lose by hitting his 'free' golf ball into a lake and it will lessen your pain. 

[JLahrman]

No real golfer ever buys golf balls.  I only play Pro V1s and I've never bought one in my life.  I've played the past two weekends and without even looking too hard I've stocked up with all the balls that are uncovering themselves on the course.  Golf balls are put together so well these days, lying around for a couple of months in the winter doesn't hurt them at all.  At least not badly enough for this 8 handicap to notice.

In any case, I prefer hazards where the ball is lost.  It slows down play to have people fishing through a creek looking for their ball.  Just have it be gone and drop one.

[Forrest Richardson]

The best example, I feel, may well be the "water hazard" we utilize here in the West — a dry ravine or barranca.

[JESII]

Phil: your problem is you pay too much for golf balls - buy them used in mint condition and you pay half the price.

Is that like Jumbo Shrimp, Jerry?

[Doug Siebert]

No real golfer ever buys golf balls.

Hmmm, guess I'm not a real golfer then by your logic.  I think you gotta consider that there are two types of golfers.  Those whose directional control abilities allow them to be a net finder of balls, and those who abilities cause them to be a net loser of balls.

In international trade terms, I am China (a net exporter) and you are the US (a net importer)  And I can hit the quite quite far and quite off the mark on occasion so the fact that a Pro V1x will last years is irrelevant as some of my shots end up in spots where no human being will walk for at least the next 1000 years   Back to international trade terms, it is as if a container ship hits an iceberg or a eastern hemisphere version of the Bermuda triangle somewhere between Beijing and Los Angeles and sinks to the bottom of the Pacific never to be seen again.

Couple that with the fact that unless you play a high end course often where everyone buys $20 sleeves of Pro Vs in the pro shop before teeing off and at the turn, that even when us net losers are finding balls while looking for our own we are finding crap balls like Nike Power Distance Super Far (there really is a ball with a name something like that, I can find you some if you want to play them)

To answer the original question of the thread, being able to fish my ball out of the hazard only takes sting out of it if I'm having a crappy scoring day.  Its sort of a "at least I got the damn ball back after another terrible shot" consolation prize.  If I'm playing well and I suddenly hit a stupid shot I might be so mad I won't even look for it even if I could fish it out in two seconds.