Which pen to mark a golf ball with (and which to avoid)

What is the best pen to mark a golf ball?

A fine-tip permanent marker. That's the pen the tour pros reach for, the pen every stencil on the market is designed around, and the pen you probably already have in a drawer. The ink is solvent-based, so it bites into the urethane or ionomer cover rather than sitting on top of it, and it's touch-dry on a clean ball in well under a minute.

The Sharpie Fine is the standard example, but any equivalent permanent marker with a fine bullet tip does the same job. Our own golf ball stencil slots are cut for exactly that nib: wide enough for the tip to pass cleanly, narrow enough to keep the line crisp.

How to mark golf balls with a Sharpie

1. Clean and dry the ball first. Grass juice, sand and damp all stop the ink taking. A wipe on a towel is enough; a wet wipe and a dry-off is better.
2. One steady pass. Whether you're drawing freehand or through a stencil, move the pen once, at an even speed. Hesitating leaves blobs.
3. Don't go over it twice. A second pass spreads the ink into the dimples and makes the line fatter and fuzzier, not darker.
4. Let it dry before it goes in the bag. A few seconds is plenty on a dry ball. Rubbing it against a towel or another ball straight away is how marks smear.
5. Redo marks when they fade. They will, over a few rounds. Ten seconds with a stencil and the ball is back to new.

If you want the lines straight rather than roughly straight, the pen matters less than what holds the ball. Our guide to drawing a straight line on a golf ball covers both the freehand method and the stencil method.

Fine tip or ultra fine tip?

Fine tip for alignment lines and dots. It lays down enough ink to be seen from address, and it fills a 2.4 mm stencil slot in a single pass.

Ultra fine tip for initials, numbers and anything with corners. Reviewers of steel stencils such as Tin Cup consistently recommend the ultra fine for lettering, because the narrower nib gets into the corners of a letter without flooding them. The trade-off is that an ultra-fine line is thinner and fades sooner, so it's the wrong choice for the main alignment line.

Plenty of golfers carry both. If you only carry one, make it the fine tip and accept slightly softer corners on your letters.

Are purpose-made golf ball marker pens worth it?

There are pens sold specifically for golf balls — GolfInk and Marki are two names you'll see — and their makers claim ink formulated to grip the dimpled cover and resist fading better than an office marker. That's a reasonable claim: a ball cover is slick, and a general-purpose marker wasn't designed with it in mind. We haven't run a side-by-side test, so we won't tell you they last twice as long.

What we can say is that they aren't necessary. A standard fine-tip permanent marker has marked tour balls for decades, and the fade-and-redo cycle is a few seconds' work. If you like the idea of a dedicated pen, buy one and see. The pen that comes free with every Ball Buddy stencil is a fine-tip permanent marker in the colour you designed with, and it fits the slots exactly; a spare is £1.99.

Does Sharpie come off golf balls?

Not quickly, and not with water. Once the ink has dried it survives rain, wet grass and a rinse in the ball washer. What wears it is contact: the clubface at impact, the cart path, the bottom of a bag. A line on the equator of a ball that's been struck twenty times will be noticeably lighter; a mark on the side away from the strike lasts longer.

The one time permanent marker does come straight off is when the ball was wet or dirty before you drew on it. The ink sits on the film of water instead of the cover, and the first towel takes it away. Dry the ball first and the problem disappears.

What colour pen for a golf ball?

• Black — the classic. Crisp on white, and the only one of the four that reads clearly on a yellow ball.
• Red — the highest contrast on a white ball and the easiest to spot in the rough. A red dot has been a popular identification mark for years for that reason.
• Blue — nearly as visible as red, a touch calmer to look at over a putt. Also works on yellow balls.
• Green — distinctive, and nobody else in your fourball will have it. Check you can see it against grass before you mark a whole sleeve.

There's no wrong answer, but there is a practical one: pick a colour you'll always be able to buy again, so a fading line can be redrawn to match. That's why we stock the same colours in the designer and as ready-made pen options — black, red, blue, pink.

Pens to avoid

• Ballpoints. The ink is designed for paper. On a golf ball it skates, leaves a faint grey scratch and rubs off with a thumb.
• Gel pens and rollerballs. Water-based, so they never properly dry on a non-porous cover. They'll transfer onto your glove before they transfer onto the green.
• Chisel-tip and broad markers. Permanent, but far too wide. You'll get a stripe, not a line, and it won't fit any stencil slot.
• Whiteboard and highlighter pens. Made to come off. They do.
• Paint pens. They work, but the paint sits proud of the cover, chips at impact and can clog a stencil. Not worth the mess for a line you'll redraw anyway.

Questions people ask