In recent years, around 500,000 golfers in Sweden, through membership in the Swedish Golf
Federation, have played on various golf courses. The courses vary in difficulty and have different
obstacles, which results in many golfers losing golf balls in these hazards every year.

Calculations show that over thirty million golf balls are lost annually, of which approximately half
end up in various golf clubs' water hazards. These balls naturally represent a significant economic
value.

Historically, golf has a long tradition, and the question of ownership rights to lost golf balls has
been discussed before. Early rules stipulated that found balls should be returned to the club,
where players can recover their marked balls.

Nowadays, the activity of searching for lost balls is common among juniors in golf clubs, where
they sell the balls in the club shop to support junior activities. Golf clubs can also enter into
agreements with, for example, a diving company that, with the help of ball divers, retrieves lost
balls and either gets compensated or compensates the club for this service.
The question of who owns a lost ball is complex and touches on both golf's own rules and civil
law aspects.

According to the rules of golf, a ball is considered lost after three minutes, which may mean that if
a player moves on without having found the ball, they abandon their ownership right. This raises
the question of whether others, such as the club, the landowner, or others, can make claims on
the abandoned balls when they are found.

There are possibilities for clubs to regulate ownership rights through agreements, but without
such agreements, it becomes difficult for clubs to assert ownership of the balls.

According to the Lost Property Act, a landowner can take possession of ownerless property, but
this law is typically not applicable to lost golf balls of "insignificant value." The police have
previously assessed that found balls do not fall under the Lost Property Act, a position that has
been confirmed by the Swedish County Administrative Board.
It is, of course, completely problem-free for you as a player to pick up your own balls, and if you
pick up a few other left-behind golf balls, this is also likely to be considered of "insignificant
value."