Why is there a difference between a golf club needing to be light as possible so you can swing harder, but if you make a ball lighter you can’t necessarily throw it further than a baseball/cricket ball?
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Through the swing you continue to apply force. The force you apply to a lighter object accelerates it faster because force / mass = acceleration, which means a lighter object will accelerate faster than a heavier object given the same force.
The same is true for when you contact the ball. A lighter ball will accelerate faster and the energy transferred to it will cause it to move faster. But the hitch is inertia. Once you’re no longer in contact with the ball, now the only (meaningful) forces acting on it are gravity and air resistance, which are both acting against the ball’s inertia. A lighter ball will have less kinetic energy for a given speed, which means the air resistance will slow it down more (relative to a heavier ball).
So these two competing concepts, the energy required to make the ball fly and the energy sufficient to keep it flying for an appropriate distance are at odds. Use the reductio ad absurdum principle. If you hit a bowling ball with a golf club, it will move, but only barely. If you hit it with sufficient force to make it fly, it’s really going to fly (think a cannonball) and nothing is going to stop it. The effects of wind resistance seem negligible compared to the kinetic energy of the bowling ball. If you hit a ping pong ball, it will certainly move and move fast, but it won’t carry much energy, so it will quickly lose speed and fall to the ground.
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