Bravopilot New balls are better, clean balls are more aerodynamic. Scratches do affect flight, how much???
I swap out a ball if it has a small scratch/nick on it
This reminds me of Don’s thread about putting. Too much thinking about shit that you shouldn’t. I’ll play the same ball for weeks. We don’t have ball washers so the only way it gets cleaned is if I spit on it or the grass is wet. They have scratches, dings, scuffs… but does it really matter?? Who knows?? My ball ends up at the range when it’s the worst looking one in the bag.
I look at it like this… do you hit every shot perfectly coming off the club? No… so how can you blame a ball with a scuff mark for coming up a yard short…. Maybe you hit a soft spot in the fairway, maybe the green is hard. Major gouges, yes, the ball is done but how do you know if that little nick just saved your ass by coming up a yard short of the woods or a water hazard? The flip side is maybe the nick prevented you from carrying the hazard by a yard… I never blame the ball. Sometimes maybe that scuff has you hit a downslope for another 30 yards but a new ball carries you past it and you don’t get the benefit of the slope. None of us, including me, are that good that we should worry about balls so much.
We have a guy who laments over using a TP5 or a TP5x…. “What’d Ray post yesterday?”… “92”. “Did he use the TP5 or the X😂😂😂”. We have a good laugh over that.
Here are a couple random balls I just pulled out now. I usually carry less than 6 balls.
