PRESQUE ISLE, Maine (WAGM) – Going from croquet balls in the winter to a different use for golf balls. Here is another unique story.

When is a golf ball not a golf ball? When it ends up in Tom Cote’s hands and he turns it into a key chain or a Christmas ornament by cutting part of the cover off it and putting his skilled hands to work carving out whatever comes to his mind.

”I come up with that by hitting one with my lawnmower and it took the cover and I said well it looks like you can carve the inside so I took the cover and started to carve that one and then I started doing them all by hand and I’ll tell you some of these golf balls are hard.  So then I made a jig so I wouldn’t cut my finger quite so often and I use a Dremel to cut the outside now,” said Tom Cote.

Cote who just took up the sport of golf last year says he has learned a lot about golf balls.

”The worse one was a ballata ball because that full of this sticky. it looked like coca cola and luckily I was outside when I started to take the cover off and it just squirted all over the place and got it all over me.. it was interesting considering I had 12 more.. well 11 more I had to take them back to the pro shop and the guy goes you didn’t like them and I go uh no,” said Cote, “he said well why and I said when I stick my knife in it,  it went all over the place he said you stuck your knife in it yeahhh and he said oh you must want a two piece ball.”

They are not only used for key chains and Christmas ornaments.

”Actually I did sell one to lady and she used it for a neck piece and I’m going that got to be kind of heavy but that is what she wanted,” said Cote.

He says the first time that people see the balls they do a double take.

”Then when I tell them it’s actually the golf ball they kind of look at and they go oh I didn’t know they were made like that. I say they will have it right in there you just have to take the outside off,” said Cote.

The Limestone artist also has a use for club heads carving birds out of wood and gluing them to the head of the club nothing goes to waste he uses the shafts and make walking sticks out of them… he also says he now has a cellar full of irons and has started using them for hat and coat racks. He can find a use for almost anything including an old golf bag that a student challenged him to use.

”When he was leaving that night he said bet you can’t come up with something with that golf bag and I said betcha can so when he came back for carving lessons the next week it was out there with plants and ivy hanging  and he just went shoulda known.. and that was it,” said Cote.

It’s hard to tell what Cote will come up with, but you can be sure it will be something quite interesting and different.

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