The average golfer greets an errant tee shot with the kind of phrase a family newspaper must replace with asterisks and ampersands.
Jeff Spriegel Sr. cheerfully welcomes any wayward golf shot.
Hooks. Slices. Flubs that splash into water hazards and mishits that skip into thick rough. Spriegel embraces them all because without them he couldn’t do something he loves nearly as much as playing the sport:
Hunting for lost golf balls.
The lanky Kenmore resident stalks Sheridan Park Golf Course in the Town of Tonawanda, collecting dozens of golf balls daily and 20,844 for the season.
“Everybody makes bad shots,” Spriegel said from a seat in the clubhouse. “Even the best golfers.”
He scoops up whatever he finds during his regular morning round before he returns for an afternoon collection effort focused on the most fruitful areas to search.
Spriegel bags the balls and brings them home to clean them, dry them and pack them up in boxes that can fill much of his basement and garage.
He does it all before, about once a month, ferrying the boxes downtown to volunteers from Bunkers in Baghdad, a Buffalo-based charity that ships donated golf balls and equipment to service members and veterans worldwide.
Of course, there are plenty of ways to support a worthy cause that don’t require this much time and effort.
Spriegel’s wife said she understands why some might see his ball harvesting as a compulsion.
“The collecting is just who he is – part of who he is,” Kim Spriegel said.
The 69-year-old has played golf since he was 9 years old, when it offered a chance to bond with his father, Clyde.
“I had that undivided time with him,” Spriegel said.
He said his mother, Shirley, carded a hole in one at 79 and, more importantly, demonstrated the value of public service as an active volunteer.
Spriegel, a retired school psychologist, said he can’t remember ever buying new golf balls to use because he plays with what he finds or those he…
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