The Great Golf Ball Hunt
If you follow me on Instagram, you're familiar with our nightly golf ball hunts and #greatgolfballhunt20 (or whatever the year may be). But in case you don't, or you're wondering how that all began, here's the story...
We moved into a house in a "golf course community" a little over three years ago. I can't remember exactly when we found the first golf ball, but the first few times we walked to the neighborhood playground a block away, we found a stray golf ball each time. And we found a few that had made their way into our yard. And then we started seeing them in the "buffer zone" between our yard and the course.
This evolved into a nightly walk around the section of the course behind our house. There are rules to golf ball hunting -- we only go out when no one is on the course, and we only walk in the area by the house and in a direction that ensures we'll see someone teeing off on the opposite hole and can get out of their way.
Golf ball hunting became a ritual. We follow almost the same path each night (unless someone starts golfing, then we reverse course to stay out of their way). Joe and I figured it was a good way for all of us to get some exercise, and the girls work off some energy before bedtime.
We didn't keep track of how many golf balls we found in 2017, but I'm going to guess at least 100. When spring 2018 rolled around, we started back out on our hunts. I'm not even sure how I ended up documenting it on Instagram, but I know we had a big night early in April when we found 13 golf balls -- a new record! I started posting the nightly tally on my stories, mainly because I was sort of amazed by how many we were finding.
That summer ended up being a bit more rainy, and we didn't get out every single night. We ended the year with 182 golf balls, which we thought was a lot. Apparently, we were just getting started... because we found 450 in 2019!
And now, thanks to a very mild winter, and even after the golf course was closed for more than a month, we're even ahead of last year's pace! We found our first golf ball of 2020 on January 4!
Sophie keeps setting monthly goals to hit another 100 milestone by the first of each month, and I had my doubts on some of them, but last night (July 22) we found No. 300 on the year! It's crazy!
What's really funny is that we have something of a fan base for the Great Golf Ball Hunt. Several of our neighbors will stop us to ask how many we've found each night. One lady will watch for us and toss any that made their way into her yard that day. And the guys who wash out the golf carts each night seem to know we're coming and toss any strays where we can find them.
Now, what do we do with all of those? At this point, most of them are sitting in boxes in our house. Yes, that's approaching 1,000 golf balls. The girls don't want to get rid of any of the brightly colored ones (especially pink ones). One of our neighbors will buy the Titleist ProV1s we find, and we managed to sell a few at last year's yard sale, but this year's yard sale has been postponed due to the pandemic (and I'm not even sure I'll want to set up in September...).
Maybe that's the side hustle I was supposed to come up with during quarantine... Hey, who wants to buy some golf balls? Or some crafts made out of golf balls? One of my cheerleaders sent me some cute ideas on Pinterest...
We moved into a house in a "golf course community" a little over three years ago. I can't remember exactly when we found the first golf ball, but the first few times we walked to the neighborhood playground a block away, we found a stray golf ball each time. And we found a few that had made their way into our yard. And then we started seeing them in the "buffer zone" between our yard and the course.
This evolved into a nightly walk around the section of the course behind our house. There are rules to golf ball hunting -- we only go out when no one is on the course, and we only walk in the area by the house and in a direction that ensures we'll see someone teeing off on the opposite hole and can get out of their way.
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| Sophie with No. 300 -- and it's pink! |
We didn't keep track of how many golf balls we found in 2017, but I'm going to guess at least 100. When spring 2018 rolled around, we started back out on our hunts. I'm not even sure how I ended up documenting it on Instagram, but I know we had a big night early in April when we found 13 golf balls -- a new record! I started posting the nightly tally on my stories, mainly because I was sort of amazed by how many we were finding.
That summer ended up being a bit more rainy, and we didn't get out every single night. We ended the year with 182 golf balls, which we thought was a lot. Apparently, we were just getting started... because we found 450 in 2019!
And now, thanks to a very mild winter, and even after the golf course was closed for more than a month, we're even ahead of last year's pace! We found our first golf ball of 2020 on January 4!
Sophie keeps setting monthly goals to hit another 100 milestone by the first of each month, and I had my doubts on some of them, but last night (July 22) we found No. 300 on the year! It's crazy!
 |
| Annabelle found No. 301 just a few feet away! |
Now, what do we do with all of those? At this point, most of them are sitting in boxes in our house. Yes, that's approaching 1,000 golf balls. The girls don't want to get rid of any of the brightly colored ones (especially pink ones). One of our neighbors will buy the Titleist ProV1s we find, and we managed to sell a few at last year's yard sale, but this year's yard sale has been postponed due to the pandemic (and I'm not even sure I'll want to set up in September...).
Maybe that's the side hustle I was supposed to come up with during quarantine... Hey, who wants to buy some golf balls? Or some crafts made out of golf balls? One of my cheerleaders sent me some cute ideas on Pinterest...
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