Jerry “Catfish” Klassen knows where the nuggets are hidden on the Bear Trace at Harrison Bay golf course.
They’re in the woods, in the hazards and sometimes just in the rough beside the cart path.
Tips for finding lost golf balls
* Have others watch the shot* Identify a landmark by where it landed* Carry a club when entering the woods* Look up a hill instead of down* Have a ball-retriever in the bag* A ball rolls like water flows: downhill
The round, white and dimpled nuggets are golf balls.
Klassen is not one of the few folks in the country who make an extra dime or two by collecting golf balls and reselling them on eBay or another way. But when he’s cruising around the course making sure the pace of play is up to par, and ensuring that golfers are obeying the rules of the course – not the rules of golf – he’ll take a minute to search for additions to his collection.
“If I’m riding by, I’ll pick up a ball,” he said. “But I don’t go into the woods. Chiggers and ticks made a believer out of me long ago.”
Klassen and co-worker Don Smith put the good ones, like Titleist ProV1 or fresh TaylorMade Project (A) balls, that they find into their cart and then into their own golf bag to be recycled and eventually lost again.
“We don’t look too much when we’re on duty,” Smith said. “But we know the good spots to find them.”
Every course has a spot or two or 50 – like at The Farm Golf Club – where balls disappear on a regular basis. The most common spots to find golf balls are in hazards a few feet from the line where the density increases. Another common spot on any course is to the right of any fairway about 200 yards from the middle teeing ground, because most recreational golfers slice the ball to the right.
So spots like the woods to the right of No. 4 at Moccasin Bend and No. 13 at Brainerd should be gold mines for ball-seekers.
Johnny Mills, who played Tuesday at Bear Trace, made the opposite mistake on No. 15. He lost his ball in the woods to the left. Mills experienced a common occurrence while searching for his ball.
“Before I found mine, I found two others,” said Mills, who regularly plays the course with a group of friends. “Those misses that I make are generally in the same spot that others miss.”
Hole No. 14 at Bear Trace may collect more balls than any other hole in the Chattanooga area, including No. 16 at The Honors Course. The Trace’s No. 14 is a par-3 over a slice of Lake Chickamauga with a variety of grasses, weeds and shrubs growing between the water and the green. Klassen found two balls in the spot while a foursome putted out.
That foursome included Mills and Michael Character, who whacked at the weeds for one ball and came out with another.
“You’d better watch your step looking for a ball here,” Klassen advised. “One wrong step and you’ll be wishing you had on swim trunks.”
Contact David Uchiyama at duchiyama@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6484. Follow him at twitter.com/UchiyamaCTFP.