Billions of golf balls go missing every year around the world so what happens to them all and where do they all go?

Death, taxes and golf balls

Golfers joke there are three definite things in life death, taxes and loosing your golf balls. Are the world's golfers really so bad at hitting golf balls? Or is it all a conspiracy and golf balls all have tiny magnetic chips inserted in them to make sure they are attracted to everything from water to sand hazards? It's a reasonable theory when you consider around 120,000 golf balls end up in one of the water hazards at just one golf course the Stadium Course in America - every year!

Balls don't grow on trees, do they?

Some golf course superintendents in Florida have a theory that there could be up to four dozen golf balls in the average palm tree on a golf course. In California, a cypress tree was chopped down at the Olympic Club and 200 golf balls were found in the poor plant.

Diving the depths

There are professional golf ball retrieval units out there, who dive the deepest water hazards and scour the world's sand bunkers for the missing golf balls. It's thought in America alone over 100 million golf balls are recycled from such hazards each year.

Where do they go?

Some golf balls sink in the mud, never to be seen again, others are stolen, some are even eaten a dog in England had to have an operation after swallowing 28 golf balls, and a few balls disappear to collectors.

Archaeologists and golf balls

The thing about modern golf balls is they are hardy little things just imagine in centuries to come, the archaeologists of the future will be scratching their heads about these millions of golf balls littering the earth. Perhaps golf would have endured and they won't pose much of a mystery after all, if there are billions of golf balls going missing each year, it's not a game that looks likely to disappear anytime soon. Let's just hope we don't drown in missing golf balls first.

Are golf balls ticking time bombs?

Some environmentalists are worried these missing golf balls are billions of ticking time bombs, what with the myriad of chemicals used to produce modern hi-tech golf balls today. Thankfully there are entrepreneurs out there who are happy to hunt out missing golf balls and re-sell the balls on. As well as the small time retrievers, there are professional outfits one Florida group retrieves two million golf balls a year from course lakes in Florida, despite the alligators. You can even do specialist golf ball diving courses in America. So next time you hit your golf balls, spare them a thought.