Are you man enough to play with coloured balls?

  Are you man enough to play golf with coloured balls – and no, we don’t mean blue ones from cold weather.

A recent trend in the golf world is the return of the coloured ball – but this time around there is a difference

As an average golfer I tend to wander a bit on the hallowed grounds. Oh, don’t get me wrong – I only stray off the beaten path at the most inopportune times.

I mean, I can hit the fairway every time, time after time, when there’s all sorts of room to bail out on either side. Line me up with a hazard though – the wooden variety more so than the liquid sort – and I can plunk as many missiles in there as the next guy, and sometimes even more, losing touch with those balls all too soon in their young lives.

One other area I struggle with besides seeing my ball disappear into the trees/water/wild blue yonder is that at a distance of about 180 yards or so, my ball just sort of vapourizes into the hemisphere.

As such, I have tried orange golf balls back in their heyday. I’ve dabbled with the newest yellow golf balls offered up by Srixon and also teed up the other odd ball colour (no, not pink, at least not yet) but I always tend to return to the standard white golf balls.

But being an adventurous type, my journey continues.

My most recent trek into “easier to see” variety of golf balls was down the metallic Chromax highway and no, I didn’t tee up the pink variety of those either – at least not yet.

Supposedly these shiny implements of frustration are easier to follow in the air and find once they land on terra firma – no word on whether they’re also easier to spot at the bottom of a water hazard though!

Being a cutting edge kind of guy, I bought a few of these glistening orbs and trooped off for a round and a test of sorts to see if they are actually easier to track in flight and once they land.

The answer to that dilemma, at least in my eyes, is yes…and no…and sort of…and maybe in the right light.

In other words, it’s buyer beware and make sure you’re wearing shades on a sunny day when lining up a putt with the silver spheres – the reflections can not only blind you from certain angles and they are hugely distracting when concentrating on making that 40-foot bogey putt.

Just joking there -  it was actually only about 30 feet.

I’m not sure who the first guy to ever use a coloured ball in a major golf event was but I do know Wayne Levi was the first to win using an orange ball. It’s likely he couldn’t foresee the day coming where these glistening metallic balls would be put into play.

What it all comes down to though is this: Are these balls in fact easier to see in the sky or on the ground?

Again, that’s a tough one to answer. Sometimes they are. Sometimes they aren’t.

Would I buy more of these balls?

No.

Then again, if someone were to give them to me, I’d use them until they’d decided they had had enough of my company and we’d part ways with no hard feelings.

Note: The toughest part of this judging job was in playing two balls off the tee, or fairway, as groups behind you tend to get a little peeved. So, it’s a case of finding a course and a time of day to play in this manner where a few extra swings aren’t going to bother anyone else’s enjoyment of their day.

As for shot distances, the Chromax balls were virtually identical to name brand golf balls but again, this was very unscientific and with a swing like mine, which rarely seems to repeat itself, it’s not really fair to judge this aspect and the spin of the ball on greens.

So, if you’re man enough give these balls a try but be warned – some eyebrows will be raised.