Balls Up

I played a practice round of golf recently in preparation for our Spain trip. I hadn't hit a single ball in 6 months, so a quick hack around the academy course at the Bedfordshire was just the thing.

The academy course is a 9 hole "par 3" course. There is one short par 4 at the end, but essentially it is a glorified pitch-and-putt.

Naturally, it is described as "challenging" by the club. Such a description is de riguer for any golf course and should not be taken too seriously. Having said that, it is a useful place to work on the short game.

OK. On the 1st tee. 7 iron. Straight up the middle, on the green! Of course I three-putted, but basically I was very happy. My brand-new-just-purchased-in-the-pro-shop golf balls were working well.

The 2nd hole wasn't so good, but I did rescue a 4 there as well.

Then, quite incredibly, I managed to lose three balls in three holes. The course has no meaningful hazards, and is - basically - short and flat ! This is a pretty depressing outcome.

Now, I did find four balls, so that was some consolation. And, to be strictly accurate, 2 of the 3 balls were not entirely lost. One was in plain view on the other side of a stream that I might have jumped if I had been younger. A second was reachable in another watery landing spot if I only had longer arms or more tenacious intentions.

The four that I found were of course even less hard to reach.

It got me to wondering about the found/lost ratio. Mine was a 1.33 today. What determines the statistic for a particular player?

Skill: a poor player will lose a lot of balls. An excellent player may lose almost none. However, the bad player has a lot more opportunity to come across new ones, whilst the good player does not want to waste time looking (and has no need to). So, low ratios are associated with very poor or very good players, with a peak at the "average".

Of course, a good player going round with a bad player may lose none, whilst picking up some extras as he helps his partner looking.

Age: The younger player is more willing and able to get involved with a tricky recovery, so fewer errant balls will stay lost. Meanwhile more new balls will be turned up during the search. The older player has probably found and lost so many balls that the novelty has faded.


Attitude: Some players simply will not give up on a ball. This may be due to miserliness, but equally it can reflect a tenacity that is an asset in the game itself. Others, of course, easily resign themselves to a loss.

The function certainly has some interesting characteristics. Perhaps if I was spending less time thinking about this then I would have been able to focus more on not losing balls in the first place !