Golf ball care, storage and lifespan

Golf Ball 101

Golf ball care, storage and lifespan

Store golf balls indoors at normal room temperature, away from hot cars and attics. Titleist says balls kept this way can be stored for five years or more. In play, a ball lasts until it is cut or noticeably scuffed. Cold air and cold balls both cost distance, and refinished balls test worse than used balls with original covers.

Storage

Titleist says its balls "can be safely stored for five years or even more, as long as they are kept away from excessive heat," and that normal indoor conditions are fine. It specifically warns that attics and cars get very hot in summer and can shorten a ball's life, and recommends storing balls indoors year-round.

Practical guidance that follows from this:

Keep spare balls in the house, not in the trunk or a garage that gets hot.
In cold weather, bring balls inside between rounds. Gene Parente, co-host of GOLF.com's Fully Equipped podcast, says a cold core takes about an hour to warm back up.

How temperature affects performance

Temperature works in two ways: cold air is denser and creates more drag, and a cold ball is less resilient.

Air temperature. Titleist gives a rule of thumb of about a 1.5 percent distance loss for every 20 degree F drop. GOLF Top 100 instructor Andrew Rice measured about 2 yards of carry lost per club for every 10 degree F drop below 75 F, using TrackMan, at his 2018 Coach Camp. The effect was smaller with a pitching wedge, about 1.3 yards per 10 degrees.

Estimates vary by source. Golf Digest reports TrackMan's figure as about 1 yard of carry per 10 degrees, and former USGA technical director Frank Thomas's as about 2 yards.

Ball temperature. In a MyGolfSpy test at a 100 mph driver speed, balls left in a freezer for most of a day lost more than 6 mph of ball speed and more than 21 yards of distance compared with room-temperature balls. Warm balls carried about the same as room-temperature balls, within roughly a yard.

Golf Digest reports a Golf Laboratories test finding that a warmed ball quickly adjusts to outside air temperature, so pre-warming has little lasting effect.

A rules note. Rule 4.2a(2) prohibits playing a ball whose performance characteristics have been deliberately altered, "such as by scuffing or heating the ball." The penalty is disqualification. Do not use ball warmers or similar devices during a round. Titleist suggests rotating two balls and keeping the spare in a pocket in very cold weather.

How long a golf ball lasts in play

There is no fixed number of rounds or holes. Durability depends on the cover, what the ball hits (cart paths, trees, bunker rakes) and the wedge grooves it meets.

Guidance from Titleist's ball community: keep playing a ball until it is cut, scuffed or shows worn spots, and replace it if you see odd ball flight. Titleist describes ionomer covers as harder and more durable than urethane (see [construction.md](construction.md)).

The Rules of Golf let you replace a ball during a hole only if it is clearly cut or cracked during that hole (Rule 4.2c). Between holes, you may change balls freely unless a One Ball local rule applies (see [rules.md](rules.md)).

Water balls

Balls recovered from ponds are a big part of the used-ball market. The best published study on modern balls is reassuring.

Pond study (2023). T.R. Raffel and P.R. Long, writing in the International Journal of Golf Science, submerged 2016 Titleist Pro V1 balls in three golf course ponds for 1, 3, 5 and 12 months. Golf Laboratories robot-tested 143 balls. They found "no significant evidence of changes" in total distance or dispersion; any difference was about 1 yard, or 0.5 percent. Submerged balls yellowed, but color was not linked to performance.

The authors note limits: they tested one model, used new balls with undamaged covers, and tested ponds, not salt water. They cite a 1996 Golf Digest study that found larger losses after six months, but on older ball designs with different covers, and a 2019 study that found severe damage in marine environments.

What this means. A modern ball with an intact cover that spent months in a freshwater pond appears to perform close to new. Balls with cuts, long submersion of unknown length or salt-water exposure are less certain.

Used, recycled and refurbished balls

These terms mean different things.

Used or recycled balls are cleaned and graded but keep their original cover and paint.
Refurbished or refinished balls have been stripped and repainted, and sometimes re-stamped.

What testing shows. MyGolfSpy tested refinished Pro V1 balls against a new 2021 Pro V1. The refinished balls were slower at every speed and, off the driver, about 13 yards shorter at 115 mph, 7.5 yards at 100 mph and 6 yards at 85 mph. MyGolfSpy attributed part of this to extra paint layers making dimples shallower. The refinished balls were also older designs, which contributes to the gap.

In a separate test, MyGolfSpy found top-grade ("mint") used Pro V1 balls indistinguishable from new ones in look, feel and play.