Big Finish: Recycla-Balls

by Darin Bunch

WANNA TEST DRIVE YOUR FAVORITE GOLF BALL? THESE GUYS HAVE ALL MAKES AND MODELS

Not many horror movies are set on golf courses.

But there I stood, frozen and alone in the late afternoon on Stevinson Ranch’s No. 4 tee, with darkness falling fast, facing the Creature from the Black Lagoon square in the face — a wet, murky shadow of a figure, emerging from the water hazard.

And then I saw ... the air hose. Wait a minute — the Creature from the Black Lagoon needs oxygen? That doesn’t seem right, I thought. Instead, my brush with death turned out to be nothing more than my first encounter with a golf-ball diver, lugging a sack of Top-Flites, Titleists and the like behind him.

“It is very physically demanding work,” says Lenny Wood of Second Round Balls, which calls Spokane home but ships “found” balls to distributors throughout the Northwest and customers as far away as Florida. “You can’t be a 98-pound weakling and go dive for balls. You hit the water wearing 100-plus pounds of gear, and you come out carrying your 100-plus pounds of gear plus a 100 pounds of balls. You’ve gotta be a very physically strong guy to do it. A guy my size — I would never try it.”

Instead, Wood is the middleman, purchasing balls from a network of four divers who currently contract with 14 area courses.

It’s a niche market I’d never really thought about until I met Brian Ranney and Scott Nichols of Golf Balls Only, a Southern California company that makes the rounds to consumer shows, bagging up all manner of brands for customers seeking savings. In talking to them, it was the cleaning process that got my attention. “We put them in a washing machine,” Nichols said.

Talk about washing your whites. Do you tumble dry?

Up in Washington, Wood sympathizes. “That’s how we used to do it,” he says. “But we’ve destroyed lots of washing machines. Now we’ve got some more industrial ways of cleaning large quantities of balls.”

By ‘we,’ he means his wife Tina, who has been able to stay home with the children thanks to their successful family business. Together — with 330-gallon soaking containers, proprietary chemicals and custom-made sorting boards — the Woods work their way through the 10,000-ball lots they buy. But Lenny is quick to admit who’s doing the bulk of the work. “It’s mostly Tina — she’s a much better grader than I am. I get in too big of a hurry. She’s much more meticulous at it.”

So what’s the most popular ball?

“Oh, the Pro-V1, by far,” Lenny says. For $21.95 plus a $1 shipping per dozen, he’ll send you their A-graded selections, more than 50 percent off what you’d pay at the retail level. And, if you’re not so picky, you can buy “value bags” by brand — 25 balls for anywhere from $5 to $9.

It’s all about volume. On the day we spoke, Lenny had just sold 100,000 balls to a wholesaler, and on the customer level, he estimates they can move 50 dozen balls during a summer weekend. And then there are the custom orders. Do you like the old-school wound balls? Want balatas? He’ll keep an eye out for you. In the meantime, you can easily test drive other brands.

“Probably 90 percent of the golfers out there are never going to be shooting par consistently, so they get the opportunity to buy from us an assortment of balls, inexpensively, that they can try to get the feel for without spending a fortune. Because not everyone can afford the high-end balls. For 50 bucks, they can get three dozen different balls to try and not be committed to them because of the price.”

Personally, I’m loading up a bag of Hogans for the month of August. What ball do you want to play?
For more information on Second Round Balls or to become a distributor, visit www.secondroundballs.com or call 509.999.3601. To contact Golf Balls Only, call 909.946.9785. FG