Ballzee

The Ballzee failed to live up to expectations created by the fact that it was a New Product Award Winner at the 2005 PGA Merchandise Show.

Pros

Cons

The Ballzee is a small device whose purpose is to clean golf balls on the green. It is designed to be a more convenient way for a golfer to do so than carrying a regular golf towel onto the green.

The Ballzee consists of a terry cloth that is attached to the inside of a vinyl cover, with the vinyl cover folded over to create a flap. Before the round, the golfer wets the terry cloth lining, wrings it out, and places the Ballzee in his pocket. The terry cloth stays wet all day but the vinyl cover prevents the golfer's pocket from getting wet.

Once on the green, retrieve the Ballzee from your pocket and clean your ball. Sounds great, and the Ballzee certainly has the advantages of convenience. It also does stay wet itself, but your pocket stays dry. It fits easily into a pocket and is never noticed except when it's needed. So far, so good.

But in fact, we were very disappointed in this product, especially considering the notice it received at the 2005 PGA Merchandise Show.

The first Ballzee we tried came apart during use, the terry cloth lining separating from the vinyl cover. The second one survived each round in which we used it, but just didn't work that well.

The surface area of the terry cloth is very small. If there was any dirt or grass on the golf ball (and if we were cleaning it, then there was), the Ballzee quickly became dirty itself. So each time we "cleaned" our ball afterward, we were really just pushing the dirt and grass around without removing it.