I have a complaint with the playing of golf lately.

We need to develop a sense of reasonability about our approach to the search for a golf ball. There are a great many of us that are going too far with the search for a lost ball.

I have just done some research on the internet and determined that a golf ball can cost anywhere from $2 to $5 for a brand new, brand name, top of the line golf ball. We are going to assume, for the purposes of this discussion, that all of you are using a top of the line ball when you are doing all this searching. Because if you're using a range ball that you dug out of the bush 3 years ago then I'm about ten times more pissed off then I already I am.

Look, I can understand the desire to find a lost ball. You hit a bad shot but you got a good look at it, and you've got a decent idea of where it is. But lets be reasonable, ok? You hit it in the bush? Its not in the fairway, or the deep grass, or some place that's easy to find. You hit it in the bloody scrub brush or the deep thicket. I know you think you know where it is, but this really is a needle-in-a-haystack scenario.

However, more aggravating are those of you that are holding up progress on the whole damn golf course to go searching for a ball that is not on your section of the course anymore. I've seen this happen. Let me give you all a rule of thumb. And its not a difficult to follow one.

1) If your ball is, out of bounds, as the rules of the course are laid out
2) Your ball is in someone else's field of play
3) It would require walking 50 yards past the out of bounds stake to get where you think your ball might be

If all of these conditions are met then you have to let the $3 golf ball go and just move on with your game. The $3 is not worth it and you're pissing off everyone else around you on the course if you keep persisting in looking for it. Just take a bloody drop and move on.