Dear Tom,
Absolutely! Pelz learned about all he knows about ball balancing from Bob Charles, the great New Zealand lefty who won the British Open and has had a fine career recently on the Senior Tour. Charles was famous in the 1960s for balance-checking all his balls with the jet-dry solution Pelz recommends in his book a couple of decades later, Putt Like the Pros (1986). Many people believe that Ben Hogan also balance-checked his balls.
Ball manufacturing has improved greatly since a series of articles on the subject appeared in Golf Digest in the 1970s (also before Pelz). Today, some competitors in the highly competitive (dog eat dog) business of selling golf balls claim that their balls are the only one truly balanced. Wilson's True ball claims this, and also claims that other balls by other manufacturers are VERY out of balance. This sort of claim has resulted in lawsuits to make Wilson prove it or shut up.
In the controversy that ensued, it appears that Wilson sort of rigged the comparative tests to make the others' balls look as bad as possible, by fin ding the direction of the off-centered center of gravity out from the physical center of the ball and then making sure that this out-of-kilter center is way off to the side before rolling the ball. Orienting the ball this way shows the imbalance in the worst possible light. Actually, the chances that a golfer would line up such a ball the same way are very small, so the real problem is a lot less than suggested.
At any rate, checking a ball for balance can't really hurt if you want to go to the trouble of finding a) whether the ball is imbalanced, b) if so, can the direction out from the center of the imbalanced center of gravity by located, c) if so, can you determine just how far out of the center of the ball the bad center of gravity is located, or how far out towards the cover, d) if so and you still want to play the ball with minimal effect from imbalance, can you mark both the direction of the imbalance out from the center and the distance out from the center, and e) if you still want to play that ball, can you remember to orient the ball with the off-center in the vertical plane that the ball will travel in?
Even if you go to all this trouble and test and mark the ball, pros usually only play a ball for about three holes anyway and then throw it away. So, as far as pros are concerned, they might test balls if they have time, but they just throw out the ones they feel are imbalanced. More likely, they tell their caddies to do this with a Check-Go or something similar.
The reports of people who regularly check their balls for balance (and roundness) are pretty varied about what they find, but there really are no reports or studies about what difference it really makes to check your balls versus not checking them. I'd like to see the difference!
Personally, I just try to watch the ball carefully when I putt it to see if it looks like its rolling crooked. I sure won't use a range ball or an old beat-up ball to putt with, but I seldom see any difference so long as the ball is relatively new.
Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
Putting Theorist and Instructor
The PuttingZone
http://puttingzone.com
Golf's most advanced and comprehensive putting instruction.