The best UV golf ball hunting torches on Amazon

GOLF BALL HUNTING WITH A UV TORCH

Recently, I was watching the news here in the UK, and there was one particular segment that really caught my eye. The journalists were basically interviewing people out on the street late at night who were walking around trying to find scorpions. Now, you’re probably wondering what scorpions have to do with golf. Well, what they were doing was they were basically using UV torches to identify these scorpions in these dark and low-lit conditions because when the UV light was shown over the scorpion, it illuminated it and made it really easy to spot.

So, I decided to apply the same principles to golf. Now, what I did is I headed over to Amazon and I purchased this torch. This is a UV torch; it cost around about £10.99, and my plan is to head out to the golf course to see if I can find some golf balls using this torch. When you’re on the golf course normally and you lose your ball in the thick rough or in the bushes, it can be really quite difficult to find it. However, at night time on the golf course, when there is absolutely no light, this UV torch should hopefully be able to clearly identify and detect those white golf balls or brightly colored golf balls out on the golf course. So, I’m going to head out to the golf course to see how many I can find tonight.

PREPARING FOR THE HUNT

Okay, so I’m going to head out to the golf course just now. I’ve got myself nicely wrapped up. I’ve got this bag; hopefully, by the time I come back, that will be full of golf balls. I’ve got my little Nike golf hat here because it’s really, really cold outside, so that’s a must. This is my UV torch here. So, there’s a couple of settings that are really good on this one here. First of all, you can light up with a normal light, and you can also change how wide the spread is there, so it’ll be brighter, obviously, when it’s a much smaller, a more narrow spread, and it’s got a strobe on it. And more importantly, it’s got this UV light. So, there’s the purpley UV color you see here that will hopefully illuminate those golf balls. And I’ve got a little backup number here as well because I’ll be out on the golf course in the pitch black, and if this one happens to run out of battery, then at least I’ve got a spare here to help me get home. And then I’ve got a set of gloves because most of these golf balls are probably going to be in the bushes or in the thick sort of rough, so rather than sticking my hand out and putting into a thorny bush when I can’t see what I’m doing, these should come in handy. So, I’m going to head out. Hopefully, I’ll find some golf balls. I’ll come back in and I’ll see at the end how many I have. I’m going to go for around about an hour, so drop a comment below to let me know how many you think I’ll find, and I’ll unveil the number at the end of this video.

STRATEGY AND FIRST FINDS

So, that’s me down at the golf course now. One of the things I’m wanting to do here is come up with a plan of where to look. So, at the moment, if I pan the camera around, well, you might not even be able to see, it’s just completely pitch black. So, basically, I’ve got a little attachment light onto the camera here just now, which is allowing me to at least see my face in the film, but I’m thinking the best place to go is where golf balls tend to be lost. So, for me personally, I’m going to pick the spots on the golf course where I tend to lose a golf ball. So, like, for example, the third hole, anything sort of right off the tee in about 200 yards, I think there’s a high chance there’ll be some balls there. So, I’m going to target the areas first of all where I personally tend to lose golf balls and where I know that a lot of people do, and hopefully, I’ll have some luck. And then I’ll probably just follow the kind of natural flow around the course. So, I’ve got around about an hour as I said. I’m going to see how many I can find in that time, but I suspect there will be some down near the third Fairway. So, let’s head there and see if I can find some balls.

You can see, if I pan down, just how brightly the laces on my trainers are showing up, so that’s what I’m hoping with the golf balls I’ll be able to see. So, let’s head into the thick rough. So, I’m going to head into this area because I think this is probably a little bit more likely to have balls. So, you can see underneath here there’s a reflection there. I just shine the torch on it, and that, I believe, is a golf ball. So, you can see there, look how well it shines and lights up. So, I’ve quite clearly got one. I think I thought there was another, but I think it’s actually just bird poo. So, yeah, I’ve got one. I’ve just been out for a couple of minutes, and there’s my first ball, and that’s a Callaway Super Soft, so not a bad little thing to start with.

HUNTING CHALLENGES AND NOISES

One thing I didn’t really give much thought to is the fact that in areas like this, you see there are lots of trees and overhanging branches, and especially ones like this, I’ve already managed to catch my face on them about three times, so I’m going to be a little bit more careful, and it’s quite difficult because it’s so dark, and I’m using the torch, and I’m looking at the ground. But yeah, if you do decide to go and look for golf balls like this, just be aware of your surroundings. A TaylorMade, all right. So, I’ve found another one, but as I said earlier, you can see just how easily it illuminates it, so that was easy to spot. I don’t think anyone’s going to be seeing that one if they’ve not got their torch, even during the day, because it was quite hidden. This one here, good old Top Flite.

And one of the things I’m already noticing is, although there’s a couple of cars going by, it’s generally really, really quiet, and all I can hear are sudden noises of birds flapping about in the trees like that. So, it’s something that certainly takes a bit of getting used to because you just suddenly hear noises, and of course, you’re out on a quiet golf course on your own, but yeah, there’s quite a lot of random noises.

IDENTIFYING PREMIUM BALLS

You’ll see here this is a Pro V1, and you can see, if I just try and get the camera, the pattern on the dimples, it almost looks sort of like faded or sort of like matted if I compare it with another ball. So, this one here is just a Slazenger. You’ll see under the light it looks completely different. So, if I put them side by side just like this, you can quite clearly see the difference between a Pro V1 and a Slazenger. So, this makes it a little bit easier. If you’re looking to just find high-quality golf balls, then you’ll know pretty quickly when you see a ball when it’s a Pro V1. I’ve already found about two or three tonight, and yeah, I can tell the minute the light goes on it if it’s a Pro V1 or if it’s another roundabout.

PROGRESS AND INITIAL HAUL

Right, so I’ve just popped up to what hole is this? The 16th tee, and I’ve basically been walking for about 45 minutes and searching for the balls. I’ve done, I think, four holes, and as you can see, both of these pockets here are… Oh, there you go, two balls I’ve just found out, so they’re both completely full. So, I thought it’s a good opportunity to take a look at what I’ve got so far. There’s no doubt about it that the torch works really, really well. I mean, it makes it so easy to identify the balls that are pretty much just lying almost on the surface sometimes, and you’re kind of almost amazed how people have missed them, but they obviously have, but with the torch, it just picks them up so quickly.

So, there’s a good mixture there. I’ve got Titleist Pro V1s, I’ve got Srixons, I’ve got TaylorMade, random balls like Truss, I found some old Nike balls. So, I won’t know until I get home and clean them up what quality they are, but you know, I found there’s at least 20, 30 balls here, and I’m still going to stay up for another 25 minutes or so, but there’s a yeah, there’s a lot of golf balls here, and it’s been an enjoyable walk as well. So, let’s see what I’ve got.

So, you can see here, I’ve got a good mixture. That’s just all that was basically just in one pocket, and I went to this other pocket. Okay, so I’ve got 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20. So, I’ve got 22 balls. The majority of those were found just in the last couple of holes, and I’ve got about maybe seven or eight in my bag. So, I’ve got like a pretty decent quality Titleist Pro V1 there, this Nike ball that I found as I mentioned before. What else is there? There’s another one. Nice little St Andrews Links one, in fact. I didn’t pick one of these up when I played the old course, so maybe I can just clean it up and keep that as my trophy ball. A TaylorMade, there’s this random Truss, never put a Truss, no idea what it is. But yeah, so I’ve got quite a range there. I think once these clean up, a lot of these will be good. There’s another Pro V1, so I’ve got two or three Pro V1s true for you. And yeah, I’ve got a couple of rubbish balls like this, which would be good for the, I guess, the driving range, but generally speaking, that’s not a bad return for 45 minutes effort. And I’ve got other balls in the bag, so let’s put these in, and then I’ll head to another hole and keep searching as I walk back home.

FINAL COUNT AND CLEANUP

Oh, there’s another two. Yeah, there’s one down here and one in here. A yellow one and a white one. So, it’s a TaylorMade and Maxfli Pinnacle or something like that. I’ll see if this one’s any good. So, this is the second one of these that I found. So, I’ll just put the light on. So, this is the second Nike ball I found in a couple of holes. Vapor Black. Nothing I’ve ever, ever used of it before, Vapor Black. But yeah, I used to use Nike balls all the time back in the day, so I don’t know how old this ball is. A practice ball, yeah, nice find. But unfortunately, the camera battery is really low here. I’ve only brought one, so I’m going to stop recording now because it’s about to run out, but I’ll head back to the house and take a look at just how many balls I have found.

Now, I’ve just got home. Unfortunately, the camera ran out of battery, which wasn’t great, but on the way home, I found a few more balls. What I’m going to do, I’ll get them emptied into this little storage basket here, and the plan is to head and get some sleep, and I’m going to clean these up tomorrow and I’ll see just how many I have found. And I’ll also share with you some of my top tips and findings based on using the torch, but I would say, based on how many I think I’ve found, it’s a pretty successful night.

THE RESULTS AND TOP TIPS

This afternoon, I took all of the golf balls I found out on the golf course last night and gave them a quick clean using some hot, soapy water, as you can see here. Now, be careful not to drop them. They weigh an awful lot. In fact, I found 48 golf balls in total, which is not bad for one hour’s work.

Some of my personal favorites: so I found a Nike ball here. I’ve not had a Nike ball in ages. This is like a practice ball. I have found quite a lot of Titleist Pro V1s. I’ve got a Pro V1 here, and there is a random Vice ball, so I’ve never actually played with a Vice ball, so that’s not too bad. And I think somewhere deep in here, there was also a nice Saint Andrews Old Course badged ball. So, some really good golf balls in there. They’re not in the world’s best condition. I wouldn’t say there are any in here that are completely brand new, but there’s certainly at least 10 or 15 balls here that I would quite happily play with in a bounce game, and probably five or six that I would use quite happily in a competition. The rest of these balls will probably get used for practice sessions, doing a little bit of chipping or hitting at the driving range where basically I can’t be bothered to come pick them up.

Now, in terms of how well this little torch performed on the golf course, I would say incredible. Though £10.99 is not a lot of money, it was available on Amazon. I’ve put the link in the description below in case you’re interested in buying one, but for £10.99 to find almost 50 golf balls in just one hour, and obviously, I’ve now got the torch, I can go out as often as I want.

In terms of advice for anybody who is thinking about buying one of these and taking it out, my first tip would be to make sure you get one of these torches that can toggle between a normal torch and the UV light because quite often the UV is really good at pointing out golf balls or highlighting golf balls, but it’s not so great for actually just using as a torch out on a really dark golf course. So, one like this, which can swap between a standard bulb and the UV bulb, is incredibly useful. My second tip would be to make sure you look out for any branches. Quite often you’re too busy looking for golf balls, and I noticed, as I mentioned in the video, I caught my face quite a few times on these branches, which I just wasn’t looking out for. Another thing that I would say is if you’re somebody who maybe like me watches loads of these crime programs, then get used to the idea of suddenly hearing birds or animals flapping about or moving about because it can be quite unnerving at times. You’re the only person out on a very, very quiet golf course, and you do hear sudden movements, which can panic you.

The other thing I would say is in terms of finding golf balls, my last tip would probably be to wait until the main season kicks off if you’re wanting to find really high-quality golf balls because what will happen is during the winter, people will use balls like this. So, this is like an old kind of TaylorMade one that’s not in great condition, or I have like a Pinnacle here. These are balls that people are quite happy to lose during the winter. The other thing is that quite often during the winter time, the grass isn’t growing as much, so it’s easier to find golf balls when people are out playing, so there’s probably not as many on the golf course. As well as that, if you were to go out on a Saturday, you’ll find that the majority of people playing in these medals will probably play with better quality golf balls, so a Saturday evening in my opinion would probably be a really good time to go out because the likelihood is you’re going to find Pro V1s and TaylorMade balls and the kind of more premium golf balls if you’re going out on a day of a competition.

Anyway, I really hope you found this video useful. As I said, if you’re thinking about buying one of these, then feel free to use a link in my description to get this exact same torch, which I would highly recommend. Great for only £10. If you enjoyed the video, remember to give it a like, and if you’re new to the channel, feel free to hit that subscribe button. Now, if you did enjoy this video, I’m sure you enjoyed this one here just as much.