How to Clean Golf Balls
But let’s say your hobby is patrolling golf courses, including the water hazards, for lost, forgotten, abandoned balls. At the end of the day, you may end up with a hundred scuffed, muddy balls, some of them marked for identification with felt-tip pens. How do you clean all those?
Table of Contents:
Why Clean Your Balls?
Clean balls fly truer, faster, and farther. That’s why you find scrubbing devices beside the tees at any golf course worth a sod. In fact, unless you’re a true obsessive compulsive – the cleaning your Maxflite gets in one of those golf course scrubbing stations is probably all you need.
Cleaning Golf Balls the Easy Way
Put them in the dishwasher or washing machine. They shouldn’t damage the machinery. Should this kind of hot-water washing harm any of the balls, they weren’t in good shape to begin with.
Cleaning Really Dirty Golf Balls
If this doesn’t get the gunk off (balls that have been in water and are partially covered with mold or algae may be tough customers), here are a few more suggestions:
- Soak them briefly in a product containing oxalic acid.
- Apply undiluted bleach, ammonia, OR white vinegar (but DON’T mix ANY of these chemicals together if you value your life – poison gas is produced).
- Throw a bunch of them in a concrete mixer along with crushed peanut or almond shells and let them spin around for a while.
- Put them in a container with water and throw in a couple of denture cleaning tablets.
As for getting ink off of them, use nail polish remover.
For every cleaning tip that you submit and we publish we donate .25¢ to the Clean Water Fund.
Comments:
October 17, 2007, 6:21 pm
Throw them into your swimming pool
The chlorine will clean off all the built on dirt.
Then let the kids dive in and fetch them for you.
June 26, 2008, 12:44 pm
I would say that someone should put the golf balls in a dishwasher with nothing else in it.Then you should turn the water on COLD!If you put it on HOT it will fade the color and loose the words on it.
September 22, 2008, 10:57 am
I have found that using a nappy cleaning product called Napisan - (which you soak the kids diapers in prior to putting them in the washing machine) really cleans the golf balls well but takes a bit of the sheen off them. Of course rinse them in cold water and dry with a towel.
January 19, 2009, 11:04 pm
I just started playing golf a lot and the fact that I’m young and eager to hike and get my feet wet for lost balls you can see that I usually have a lot of balls to clean when I get home. I found the best way to clean most golf balls, unless they’re titelest or offbrand balls; those are the worse brand of balls to clean;, you can use a wire brush. I know what your thinking. Wouldn’t that mess up the dimples or the ball name or something like that right? That’s what I thought too and the answer is no it won’t. The wirebrush works wonders on all kinds of golf balls except, like i said,titeles and some off brands like golfmate or staff. It especially works really well on nike. Nike balls come real clean with a wire brush.
March 9, 2009, 8:02 pm
I mixed Bleach and Simple Green together, obviously diluted in water, and let them soak for a day or so, it actually cleaned them up really well, saves a lot of scrubbing.
Monday 25th May 2009
May 25, 2009, 5:00 pm
I just Sit the golf balls in realy hot soapy water and leave them for 15mins then take them and dry them with a teatowel and then they look brand new.