Thanks for the link Darock. It seems it is not cut and dried to call it "lift", but since Wikipedia does, I'll go along with it. I think we all understand the same thing, we're just explaining ourselves differently. Here's what the Wikipedia article that Darock linked says about the force:

"For a smooth ball with spin ratio of 0.5 to 4.5, typical lift coefficients range from 0.2 to 0.6.".

So the question still stands. Does the "lift" force have more effect on the distance the ball travels than the effect of reducing dynamic or overall drag?

Any one have data on the drag coef's of a smooth golf ball verses a dimpled one?