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Scuba diver in water hazard....

malemotives

malemotives

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I know I've only been playing golf going on two years, but I've played many courses and today was the first time I laid up to a water hazard and watched a scuba diver bobbing up and down retrieving balls. The front of the hazard was 225 yards from the tee and it was another 80 yards across the water. Why anyone would try crossing that water from the tee was beyond me. I suspect most of the balls got wet because it was a blind shot (downhill, over a ridge) and probably easy for some to misjudge while laying up. To my mind, anything more than an easy 5 iron was going to get wet. He was retrieving golf balls by the bucket full.
 
I've actually met a guy that does this for extra cash. He has the full permission from the courses that he does it on and said that in a good year, the sale of the found balls will cover the cost of a scuba trip to the Bahamas.
 
Those divers are usually contract guys that pay the course a little for the sole right to recover the balls.
I read in the news that last year alone, there were over 25,000 balls recovered from Coeur d'Alene lake, around the Coeur d'Alene Resort Golf Course's world famous floating 14th green.
 
Course I grew up at had a scuba guy who collected balls. I imagine he made a fortune.
 
That's pretty funny. Never seen that before. I went canoeing on a river that went through a golf course before and collected almost 100 balls. It was a fun time!
 
Adam Hartzell said:
I've actually met a guy that does this for extra cash. He has the full permission from the courses that he does it on and said that in a good year, the sale of the found balls will cover the cost of a scuba trip to the Bahamas.
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Maybe I need to start doing this. Just have to worry about the snapping turtles.
 
At my usual course, You couldn't pay me enough to actually get in that water. It's just gross! Not to mention the bacteria, and whatever else may be growing in it.
 
seen it a few times it is amazing how many they find
 
I was a SCUBA instructor in Florida for 13 years in the late 80’s through the 90s and certified three guys that specifically just wanted to retrieve golf balls. They would literally fill 55 gal drums on a regular basis and made pretty darn good money. But, in Florida any body of water bigger than a five gallon bucket more than likely has an alligator in it. The one guy decided to move to North Carolinato to do the same work after he got bitten the second time. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that NC has its share of gators too.
 
boondoggle said:
I was a SCUBA instructor in Florida for 13 years in the late 80’s through the 90s and certified three guys that specifically just wanted to retrieve golf balls. They would literally fill 55 gal drums on a regular basis and made pretty darn good money. But, in Florida any body of water bigger than a five gallon bucket more than likely has an alligator in it. The one guy decided to move to North Carolinato to do the same work after he got bitten the second time. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that NC has its share of gators too.
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So true. On the coast here, gators are everywhere. I keep my eyes open everytime I go near ponds, etc here.
 
They recently did this in a hazard at my home course and found over 20k balls in a 3 day stretch


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They just did a special on maybe the golf channel about these scuba guys....apparently there are a ton of them that sneak onto courses at night without permission and get balls.I think they called them night hawks or something. It was pretty interesting and the guys who have permission hate the other guys. It went into detail about some of these guys making a living from golf ball diving.
 
well, I guess all the used balls being sold have to come from somewhere, they don't just appear out of nothing. But that is pretty cool. No one really thinks about this stuff till we see it.
Anyway, as far as the OP wondering why so many balls in that lake. In addition to some drives there are any number of scenarios that can put tons of balls in there.

#1) Blind tee shot as indicated in the OP
2) Second shots after thousands of short and/or poor tee shots which end up just about anywhere causing one to now carry over from much closer than the tee area and now doable but still a long distance and of course then fail
3) the thousands of second shot flops taken after a good proper layup drive right from the lake edge
4) the thousands of penalty drops taken due to the above reasons and then they flop the next one in anyway or don't get across the 80 yrds anyway.

Hey, remember most people are not good at golf. I think we can put a lake in the same town as a golf course that has nothing to do with it and we'll find golf balls in it LOL. Hazards are magnets for golf balls. I've always advocated that if we hypothetically took two identical hole layouts and put water along the left side of one but not the other, there would be many more balls in the left water vs the amount at that same landing area on the other hole without the water. Imo many more balls would head left. The mental pressure for most amateur/weekend hackers is funny that way imo.
 
Funny that you mention that. I saw the same thing at a local muni last summer. Definitely not something you expect!
 
Talked to one on the course yesterday. We asked him if he could see the balls or picked them up by feel. He said they go by feel. He said even in a clean lake (this one was murky with reclaimed water) that the bottom surface gets disturbed and there is no visibility. It was 100 degrees as he was pulling on protective gear to go into this lake of sh€t water. No thanks!
 
I have a family friend that started a business in CT buying up balls from these guys, cleaning and sorting/grading, packaging and selling them wholesale. It's a fascinating business to me and I've offered to do some consulting work for him in the past and be paid in balls.
 
Follow-up... this is the water hazard the unexpected diver surfaced from.....

the-home-course-1057.JPG
 
Lance0363 said:
At my usual course, You couldn't pay me enough to actually get in that water. It's just gross! Not to mention the bacteria, and whatever else may be growing in it.
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This x100. Most of the local courses with lots of water here are stagnant with lots of geese pooping in them.

nope!
 
That's a purdy course malemotives.
 
Adam Hartzell said:
I've actually met a guy that does this for extra cash. He has the full permission from the courses that he does it on and said that in a good year, the sale of the found balls will cover the cost of a scuba trip to the Bahamas.
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My home course has a guy who does it on contract... he contracts with a half dozen courses and makes a very good living from it. He recovers, cleans and grades the balls.
 
Pretty sure once my local course keeps their range rocks stocked the diver sells the extras for cash. Like others said, you couldn't convince me to get in the water hazards at my local. Years of no fishing has caused some big fish in there.
 
Paladin said:
Pretty sure once my local course keeps their range rocks stocked the diver sells the extras for cash. Like others said, you couldn't convince me to get in the water hazards at my local. Years of no fishing has caused some big fish in there.
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Oh, come on. Big fish in Arizona? I've dived with 40 foot whale sharks and 12 foot hammerheads. There isn't a freshwater fish in the US that is a threat to a human. I grew up swimming in lakes with 40" northern pike and even larger muskies.

Scariest thing I ever ran into was while snorkeling in a lake in Wisconsin and coming face to face with a good size snapping turtle in low visibility water. We were within about 3 feet when we saw each other, and we both did an about face and exited. It was scary because of the surprise, not because I ever felt threatened.
 
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