Do Balanced Golf Balls Really Help?

In theory, a balanced ball will go straighter on all shots and putts than an unbalanced ball. To illustrate, take a cheap volleyball and roll it, and you will see that the ball will curve toward the side that has the air-fill hole due to the extra weight needed to support the hole. Golf balls however are much better balanced than volleyballs, yet most golf balls are not perfectly balanced. To prove this, partially fill a small bucket with water and keep adding salt until the golf balls float. Use a waterproof permanent ink marking pen to put a spot on the golf ball where it touches the surface. Then spin the ball in the water and see if the same spot arrives at the top. If it does, then the ball is not balanced because the heaviest side of the ball will always face down. I tried this with all of the balls in my bag and none of them were balanced, several different brands.

On the course, now that the ball is marked, the theory says that you keep the mark along the plane of the target line, and the ball should go straighter than if the mark were sideways to the target line.

If you do not like getting the balls all wet, there is another method using a small battery operated ball spinning device called “Check-Go”, available at many golf shops for under $30. If there is a heavy spot while the ball is spinning, that spot will work its way to the equator of the spin if you let it spin for several seconds. While it is spinning, you can lightly touch the ball with a permanent ink marking pen, and you will have the equator clearly marked to line up your ball for all shots and putts. This also is a good identifier for your ball on the course, because most other players do not do this.

Wilson has advertised their “True” ball as being perfectly balanced, so to test that, I put a few Trues on the Check-Go device and marked the equator, and then spun it again with the equator out of line, and it worked its way back to the same equator, which indicates to me that it is not really “perfectly” balanced. Hmmm! Well, in all fairness to Wilson, the balls may be better balanced, but nothing is perfect. Could the extra ink along the equator make that much difference? No, because I then put a fatter false equator on the same ball, but the ball spun back again to the true equator.

Then I wondered if the balance characteristics might change after hitting the ball for a few rounds. The results were, for all brands, that the equator arrived at the same spot again, so hitting the ball did not change its balance.

Any ball marked with the Check-Go equator, should float in salt water with the equator mark straight up and down. If that does not happen, maybe the ball is closer to being perfectly balanced.

Have my scores improved since I began marking the golf balls? Am I hitting the ball straighter? Are my wild shots any less wild than they used to be? Unless you swing with a consistency like Iron Byron, how can you really tell? Am I making more putts? Are my missed putts due to a bad read, or a bad stroke, or an inconsistent putting surface? Any or all of those factors are likely to be more significant than the precise balance of a ball.

We humans are imperfect beings. All we can do is to use as many factors to our advantage as possible. Therefore, here is the real benefit. Marking and lining up the balls to the target line not only helps your alignment while standing over the ball, but also lets you feel a little more confident, because you just eliminated a potential balance variable, however small it may be. (see www.geocities.com/golfwithjoey)