I've never played a round of golf in my life. However, I like kayaking, and I started collecting balls after I found out one of my kayaking routes passes right through a golf course. It seems like most golf ball collectors collect them for the logos printed on them. Me, I'm fascinated by dimple patterns.
To date the balls I find, I use the USGA Conforming Ball lists. Thanks to the excellent website golfballcoverstory.com, I got my hands on a number of lists from previous years. However, finding a ball in these lists can be a tough job. Not only do you have to open the documents one by one, finding a ball inside a particular list is challenging as well. That's why I put in the effort of digitizing the docs, and putting the results in a database. As of now, I still have not finished adding all the lists into the system, as it is a rather tedious job. See the main page (below the title) to see which USGA lists are currently in the database. Currently the database contains about 15000 golf ball entries. Mind you, the same golf ball may appear in multiple USGA lists, so the number of distinct golf ball models is less than that.
I am still looking for the USGA Conforming Golf Ball lists of the years 1996-2001 and 2004. If anyone has access to one of these lists, please get in touch with me (see email address below), so I can add them to this database.
Any feedback is greatly appreciated! Please contact me at fritsb@welokee.nl.