LEWISTON — After a lifetime of playing golf and too much time spent searching for his missing ball in the rough, Phil Jones invented the Golf Ball Buoy.

The premise: If you’re down course and see where your buddy’s ball lands in the tall grass or woods, you toss the bright orange buoy to mark the spot before you drive off and save them time and choice words.

“We’ve been playing with it a year and a half,” Jones said. “We launch it and kind of yell, ‘Buoy away!’ and throw the buoy. It’s really a fun little thing, but as people see it, you’ll be like, damn, that’s a good idea.”

Jones, a longtime salesman in Richmond, Virginia, said he found Lewiston’s Allen Manufacturing to make his good idea and in its president, David Allen, someone who was willing to walk him through the creative and production process.

“I called a couple manufacturers, ‘Hey, I’m just a guy living a dream, trying to build a product,’ and he was so nice,” Jones said.

GolfBallBuoy.com went live four months ago with the weighted canvas sacks selling for $16.95. After attention from a golf industry publication two weeks ago, he’s nearly sold out of the first 500 and recently placed an order for 1,500 more.

Jones has also heard from another golf publication about highlighting the buoy around the holidays.

“Since then, I had another golf distributor call me the other day,” he said. “I told David, ‘I may have started as your smallest customer, but you never know, a year from now, we may be ordering them at 5,000 or 10,000 at a time.'”

Allen said the product fit his company’s skill set, working with fabrics of all types. When he heard the buoy described, it also made sense.

“My father was a big golfer and I use to caddy as a kid for my father, so as soon as Phil told me what the idea was, ‘Oh, that’s a great idea,'” Allen said. “Obviously, I’ve hit enough balls in the woods and you can’t find them — I’m playing once and going through nine balls or something. So, it would be nice to find them and keep the balls a little bit longer.”

Ideally, a party of four golfers might carry two to four buoys with them, Jones said, depending on the skills of the players.

He’s gotten inquiries from companies holding tournaments or employee events about getting them personalized.

Jones can also see buoys appealing to golf courses as an extra they offer players — less time searching in the tall rough means shorter games, means more players through in a day.

“For a golf course, if you can shave 10 to 15 minutes off a round of golf, that is awesome because they want to have smooth play,” he said.

There’s also the saved frustration factor, and he’s been there.

“When you play, when people are looking for balls, you’re like, ‘C’mon guys, pick it up!'” Jones said. “So it helps the golf course with speed of play (and) it helps the golfer to get less frustrated because you’re like, ‘I know the ball was just here …’ and anybody who plays golf knows exactly what I’m talking about. They vanish on you.”

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