If you are new to the game of golf, you may be curious to know why each golf ball you buy has a number on it.

In this article, we’ll help shed some light on this and go into some further detail about the numbers on golf balls.

What The Number on a Golf Ball Means

The main reason that manufacturers put numbers on golf balls is to help golfers properly identify their ball while on the golf course. It’s not uncommon for two or more players in a group to play the same brand of golf ball. 

69 of the Top 100 professional golfers on the PGA Tour play a Titleist Pro V1 or Pro V1x. That stat alone shows the importance of having a different identification number on each golf ball if at all possible. 

Golfers never want to hit the wrong golf ball during a round. If this happens, it results in a costly two-stroke penalty for the golfer who struck the wrong ball. That can ruin a golfer’s scorecard just as easily as a double bogey!

When buying brand new golf balls, you may see a number on them that is anywhere from 1 to 3 digits. Here is some insight as to what those digits mean.

One-Digit Number

Most golf balls have a single-digit number on them that is placed right underneath the brand name. This is put on the golf ball purely for identification purposes. The number is put there to help golfers avoid careless penalties during their rounds.

Here’s how having a single-digit number on a golf ball can come in handy. Let’s assume that you and one of your playing partners both play yellow Bridgestone E6 golf balls since this type of golf ball helps limit slicing.

It would be nearly impossible to tell the difference between your playing partner’s ball and your ball. This is where having different numbers on the golf balls helps. You and your partner will simply let each other know on the first tee what the number is on the ball that you are hitting.

Most golf ball manufacturers put either a 1, 2, 3 or 4 on their golf balls. In rare instances, some companies will put a number from 0 to 9 on their golf balls. 

Most brands use colors that are red or black for the numbers. Most companies will even let you customize the number that is on your golf balls for a small fee.

Two-Digit Number

Golf balls with a double-digit number show their respective compression rating. What does compression rating mean? It’s simply a way to measure the hardness level of a golf ball.

A golf ball with a lower compression rating of 60 to 80 is usually best for a beginner golfer or folks with a slower swing speed. Golf balls with a higher compression rating are better suited for male golfers or people with a fast swing speed. A simple way to remember this is that higher numbers mean a higher amount of hardness.

Not many brands print compression ratings on golf balls anymore. That was a popular trend back in the 1990s, but it’s no longer relevant in the game of golf today.

Three-Digit Number

Have you ever seen a golf ball with a triple-digit number on it? The three digits are letting you know the number of dimples on the golf ball. Most golf balls that use this feature have a dimple pattern of between 300 and 400 dimples.

It should be noted that if you see a golf ball with 100 on it, it’s not referring to the number of dimples but the compression rating. 

A golf ball with more dimples isn’t necessarily better than a golf ball with fewer dimples. For the most part, this is just a marketing tactic used by golf ball manufacturers. 

What to Do if You Have The Same Brand and Number Golf Ball as Your Golf Partner

Every once in a while, you and one of your playing partners may opt to use the same brand of golf ball with the same number on it. When this happens, you simply need to find a way to make a clear differentiation between the two golf balls. How would you go about doing this?

The best way to do this is with a permanent marker. Many golfers take a Sharpie and draw a smiley face or their favorite symbol on their golf ball for good luck. Other golfers prefer to mark out whatever number is on the ball and write their favorite number on it instead.

Another simple fix is to keep the same brand of golf ball but try a different sleeve from the dozen. With most brands, they assign a different number to each of the four sleeves in the box. You could also ask your playing partner to pull a golf ball from a different sleeve if they have any extra.

Mike Noblin

Mike has been involved with sports for over 30 years. He’s been an avid golfer for more than 10 years and is obsessed with watching the Golf Channel and taking notes on a daily basis. He also holds a degree in Sports Psychology.

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Brooks Koepka won the LIV Golf Jeddah event over the weekend, which few people watched and even fewer attended. In a vacuum, this was strange moment in the sport: Koepka, a four-time major champion, led a terrific leaderboard — Dustin Johnson, Sergio Garcia, Peter Uihlein, Matthew Wolff, Paul Casey and Joaquin Niemann — that nevertheless lacked any buzz, even when Koepka got emotional about how difficult golf has been for him over the last two years.

That’s not to say LIV Golf Jeddah didn’t matter. It was clearly meaningful to its participants and those running the upstart league. However, something Phil Mickelson said earlier in the week kept reverberating as most of the sports world ignored the better story: Four-time major winner nearly cries after beating other major winners in $20 million golf tournament because he didn’t know if he was ever going to play again.

Koepka’s triumph was not the focus, though. Why is that?

Well, there are a thousand reasons, perhaps the foremost of which is that LIV Golf is not played in a vacuum. Among those factors is that the event was played in Saudi Arabia, which has accumulated a reputation for running this league with one eye on normalizing its human rights issues. So, that’s part of it.

Golf fanatics have thus far refused to see it as a legitimate league given that LIV relies on a shotgun start, plays 54 holes without a cut and doesn’t exactly boast a great roster of golfers beyond its top 10.

Mickelson, not in that top 10, disagrees. He spent the week in Jeddah touting LIV as the future of the sport.

“As I said earlier, for a long, long time, my 30 years on the PGA Tour, pretty much all the best players played on the PGA Tour, at least for the last 20 years,” said Mickelson. “That will never be the case again. I think going forward you have to pick a side. You have to pick what side do you think is going to be successful.

“And I firmly believe that I’m on the winning side of how things are going to evolve and shape in the coming years for professional golf. We play against a lot of the best players in the world on LIV, and there are a lot of the best players in the world on the PGA Tour. And until some of the — well, until both sides sit down and have a conversation and work something out, both sides are going to continue to change and evolve.

“And I see LIV Golf trending upwards, I see the PGA Tour trending downwards, and I love the side that I’m on. And I love how I feel. I love how I’m reinvigorated and excited to play golf and compete. I love the experience. I love the way they treat us.”

It’s certainly interesting that Mickelson claimed LIV Golf is trending upwards. To date, many have posited that the primary drive of traffic or viewership to LIV Golf has been its splashy signings, including that of Mickelson. It has also added Johnson, Koepka, Niemann, Garcia as well as reigning Open champion and Players champion Cameron Smith.

The way LIV has gone about these signings has been smart, too. It spaced them out such that there was a steady stream of intrigue and interest in the acquisitions. However, those signings are only serving as flash points for the league. 

In fact, interest in LIV is waning rather than increasing. Research conducted by Golfdatatech obtained by CBS Sports shows that only 23% of respondents believe LIV Golf is a “good” idea, down from 27% in a previous iteration of its polling. Additionally, 58% believe LIV is a “bad” or “very bad” idea, up from 50%. (Four versions of research have been conducted since LIV started.)

Contrary to Mickelson’s claims, this shows LIV Golf is not trending upwards — at least when it comes to buy in from fans.

The majority of folks polled by Golf Datatech (66%) agree that they “don’t like that Saudi money is funding” LIV Golf. This figure has been consistent throughout the last several months.

Even more interesting are the YouTube numbers. Across the five events before Jeddah (for which data was not yet available), Boston did the best viewership by far. That event coincided with Smith’s signing. Chicago, the event directly after Boston, did the second-worst with Bangkok coming in last by a wide margin.

LIV Golf is broadcast on other platforms globally; YouTube is not the only place you can watch worldwide. However, the YouTube-only data seems to back up what others have posited about how big-time signings are the only primary catalyst driving interest in the league.

Perhaps that changes in the months and years to come, but the data doesn’t seem to support Mickelson’s theory. That doesn’t mean it won’t in the future, just that it doesn’t right now. 

Mickelson is paid handsomely — like many others — to spout LIV Golf’s talking points for the purpose of turning the tide on the PGA Tour. That is their best interest, of course, but it doesn’t make those statements true. LIV is hardly the only organization that touts itself in that manner, though it does stand out given the circumstances.

One day, Mickelson may indeed wind up on the “winning side” of all this. We won’t know that for several years, maybe even longer than that. As it stands now, though, one cannot objectively make that claim. LIV Golf is simply not flexing all over the PGA Tour as some would like you to believe.

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