Golf ball collection fills Farmington man's home

Frank Lamberty doesn’t golf much anymore, but you wouldn’t know that by looking at the entryway of his home.

See, Lamberty collects golf balls. Lots and lots of golf balls. Close to 2,500 golf balls, in fact. And he’s got most of them on display in his Farmington home.

A lot of times, a collection doesn’t really start out as a collection. That’s how it happened for Lamberty. It was sometime in the 1980s when he started just hanging on to a couple of logo golf balls. Before he knew it, the couple turned into a boxful. Pretty soon, he needed to build a rack.

And so it went. In fact, his collection was so unintentional, he doesn’t even remember what the logo was on the first ball he’d kept.

“I just started saving a couple of golf balls, then people started saving them for me,” Lamberty said. “There’s a million of them out there if you can get your hands on them.”

He picked up logo balls from different tournaments he’d golf. When he really started looking around, he’d find discarded or lost logo balls while he’d be out on the course – regardless of which course he was at.

He had friends and family who were looking for unusual balls, too. After a while, he didn’t have any place to put all of the golf balls he’d accumulated, so he designed a rack to hold them.

The racks cover most of the wall space in Lamberty’s entryway. There are smaller ones, there are ones that cover almost the entire section of wall from floor to ceiling. There is one over the doorway. There is a thin one that runs the length of a narrow section of wall near another doorway. And each rack is full.

He enjoys looking at the different logos on occasion. There are some oldies out there, too – for instance, he’s got one from Red Owl, and one with an older version of Mr. Peanut on it. There are countless golf clubs represented, there are bright, neon-colored balls. There are logos from UPS, Mystic Lake Casino, Keebler, the Green Bay Packers and the Norway flag. But that hardly scratches the surface.

“Most of them are companies I haven’t even heard of,” he said.

And then, there’s the one that reads “John The Great.”

“I don’t know who in the hell that is, but there it is,” Lamberty added.

Lamberty really doesn’t think twice about his collection, either. After all, he’s been gathering the golf balls for so long, the collection is as much of a part of his home as the kitchen sink.

“I fit the racks where ever they can go,” Lamberty said. “They’re just a part of the house.”

He figures the collection will continue to grow, too, because he still has friends who bring unusual golf balls to him. One day, one of his family members will probably inherit the collection, but for now, it’s his to enjoy.

In all of the racks up on the walls already, Lamberty has exactly 2,337 golf balls on display. These days, he’s trying to figure out where he can build another rack, though – he’s got a boxful of more than 100 balls that have to go up soon.

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