The Loop

5,000 golf balls spill onto Wisconsin highway, sending locals scrambling for freebies

February 20, 2019
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Channel 3000

Everybody loves a free sleeve or two. Even if they're not your ball of choice—even if they're beneath your lofty Pro-V standards—they just seem to fly a little truer and land a little softer when you know they didn't cost you dime. Just ask the good citizens of Janesville, Wisconsin, who responded to a 5,000-golf ball-spill on nearby Highway 11/14 on Tuesday morning by doing what any rational golfer would: Screeching to a stop and running into the middle of the road to grab everything they could before getting street pizza'd.

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Channel 3000

The spill was first reported by passerby at 12:27 a.m. The sheriff's deputy responding to the scene determined the balls (Nitro, don't get too excited) had indeed fallen off a delivery truck and a street sweeper was called in to push them from the roadway until they could be removed in the morning. That cleanup proved to be quicker than first anticipated, however.

According to local resident Valerie Kopac in an interview with Channel 3000, by the time she went to clean up the balls at 11 a.m., there was nothing left but the packaging thanks to the droves that had descended upon the future guilt-free water balls under cover darkness. One man who was seen collecting balls from the roadway even claimed that one had cracked his windshield after being kicked up from the car in front of him, carefully laying the groundwork for a class-action lawsuit while scooping up armfuls of the spilled merchandise.

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Meanwhile, in the second biggest golf story out of Wisconsin on Wednesday, native Cheesehead Steve Stricker was named captain of Team USA for the 2020 Ryder Cup at Whistling Straights. Needless to say, it's been a solid 24 hours for all you Badger State golf nerds out there.