The Day Enrique Found the $10,000 Golf Ball
Every golf ball that comes into our warehouse goes through the same process.
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Washed
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Hand Graded
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Sorted
Most balls are normal.
But one day Enrique grabbed a ball that felt… weird.
He shook it. Something rattled inside. Now if you’ve graded thousands of golf balls, you know that’s not normal.
The Investigation
Naturally, everyone had an opinion.
“Maybe it’s a training ball.”
“Maybe it’s cracked inside.”
“Maybe someone hid something in it.”
At this point productivity in the warehouse had dropped to approximately zero percent.
Someone finally said:
“Just cut it open.”
Now we normally don’t destroy golf balls, but curiosity had officially taken over.
So Enrique grabbed a blade and carefully sliced the ball open while everyone watched like it was some kind of scientific experiment.
The Discovery
Inside the ball was something nobody expected.
A tiny rolled up piece of paper.
Everyone stared at it for a moment. Enrique carefully pulled it out and unrolled it.
Written on the paper were the words:
“If you found this ball, you owe me a beer.
— Mike, Hole 7, 2013.”
The warehouse went completely silent. Then someone asked the obvious question.
“Do we ship the beer with the order?”
The $10,000 Golf Ball
The ball itself obviously wasn’t worth $10,000.
But the amount of time we spent arguing about what to do with it probably was.
For the rest of the day the warehouse debate continued:
• Should we try to find Mike?
• Was this the world’s first golf ball message-in-a-bottle?
• Does Enrique actually owe someone a beer now?
Eventually the ball earned a permanent nickname in the warehouse:
The $10,000 Golf Ball.
The Strange Things Golfers Do
When you recover thousands of golf balls every week, you start to notice something.
Golfers write all kinds of things on golf balls:
• motivational quotes
• inside jokes
• lucky numbers
• names
• phone numbers
• drawings that make absolutely no sense
And every once in a while…
You find a message meant for someone who may never see it again.
A Second Life for a Golf Ball
Every golf ball we ship out has a story. Some were lost in water hazards. Some were sliced deep into the trees. Some were probably launched into orbit by someone trying to crush a driver. But each one gets cleaned, graded, and given a second life.
Maybe the ball in your order has a story too.
Hopefully it doesn’t come with a beer tab.
Thanks for giving these golf balls another round.
— Shaggy Golf Balls
