Off topic -- At the Bottom of Golf Ponds, a Big Business Lurking.
[You know ... I wanted to post this in reply to some post from the last time I started some "banter" on used golf ball golf pond divers. I tried using the SI search function with the word "golf" (for this thread only), and it said no search results. (Ha !)
Anyone else disgusted with the SI search function ?]
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July 4, 2002
At the Bottom of Golf Ponds, a Big Business Lurking
By BILL PENNINGTON
BOCA RATON, Fla. — It's not the three-foot snapping turtles or the underwater snakes, eels, crabs or
spiny-backed catfish that spook Jimmy Lantz, professional golf ball diver. Lantz starts his day early, plunging
into a dozen ponds or channels on an average Florida golf course, pawing the silt-covered bottoms and the
rocky ledges with bare hands, feeling his way through water so black he can see only a few feet beyond his nose.
An eight-hour shift might yield as many as 10,000 golf balls, even as Lantz spars with the hidden wildlife and climbs
over submerged golf carts and ditched cars — all the while dodging errant golf shots, not to mention thrown golf
clubs. He lugs a satchel laden with up to 1,000 balls, an air tank and another 30 pounds of scuba gear that keep him
weighted to the pond floor.
But that's not the tough, or the scary, part.
"The worst is when you come out of the pond and people standing on the green are screaming bloody murder,
pointing behind you," Lantz said. "Then you know there's a big old alligator on the bank behind you. Those gators
don't usually do anything. But you don't like them sneaking up on you."
As in any venture, risk can yield reward. Lantz, 30, and his diving partner, Greg Siwek, are part of the almost primal
golfing instinct of retrieving lost golf balls. The reconditioning and reselling of those used balls is also a
$200-million-a-year industry, two golf retail industry associations estimate. Returned to golfers via pro shops,
discount stores and the Internet, the pond balls — as they are often called — sell at retail for as little as 25 cents each
or as much as $3 for a Titleist Pro V1, which costs more than $55 a dozen when new.
Lantz and Siwek began their own business retrieving golf balls 18 months ago. Called the Golf Ball Outlet Company,
the business has a precise five-year plan, which includes opening a golf ball store next year, when Lantz and Siwek
hope to make $100,000 apiece.
"Let's be serious, not everybody looks at a murky, slimy, alligator-infested pond filled with golf course pesticide and
fertilizer runoff and sees a business opportunity," Siwek said. "But we do. Still, when I tell people what I do, they say,
`That's not a real job,' and after I explain it, they say, `You're nuts.' But it is a real job, even if we are nuts."
One day on the job, Siwek surfaced in a golf course pond in Key Biscayne and found himself eye to eye with a
six-foot alligator. The animal threw itself at Siwek, smacked him in the mouth with its snout, breaking one of Siwek's
front teeth, then ran over him, leaving footprints on the back of his diving suit, Siwek said.
"But we kept diving because we were getting a ton of balls that day," said Siwek, who is 36. "White gold, baby."
This year, Lantz and Siwek expect to recover a million of what two golf industry studies estimate are the
approximately 300 million golf balls lost annually on American courses.
All these balls are retrieved by a gaggle of amateurs and professionals nationwide, from 10-year-olds wading in ponds
barefoot, to entrepreneurial types living next to golf courses who scour the nearby ponds with clam rakes at night, to
corporations that employ dozens of divers and fill airplane hangers with golf balls waiting to be shipped.
"As golf has gotten bigger, it's pulled in a diverse group of divers," said Jim Helm, a former golf ball diver who now
owns National Golf Inc., a Fort Lauderdale company that recycles balls. "A long time ago, it attracted the gamblers
and drinkers. They were the kind of guys who as soon as they found 20,000 balls and got a little money in their
pocket, we wouldn't see them for a while. That's changed, but it still attracts a strange breed."
In part, that's because the job can be perilous. While a brush with an alligator or a crocodile is common, at least in
Florida, the real danger is drowning. Golf balls are retrieved from water hazards on courses all over the world, and
while the water depth is rarely more than 40 feet — and usually less than half that — divers can easily become
disoriented or overly weighted down by the reclaimed balls and equipment. In Florida alone in the last decade, the state
has recorded a handful of drowning deaths involving golf ball divers.
"Some people freak out down there," Siwek said. "It's not hard. It's not like diving in the ocean or a freshwater pond.
You can't see, and fish and other stuff keep bumping into you. Even experienced guys start to panic. We've all almost
drowned. That's how you learn to survive down there — or decide to get out for good."
Lantz and Siwek each used to work for a bigger golf ball diving outfit, a vagabond lifestyle chasing sunken treasure at
golf courses up and down the Eastern Seaboard. "I had reached the V.I.P. card level at the Super 8 Motels," Lantz
said.
When Lantz and Siwek started their own business, they ran it for a year out of Siwek's one-bedroom apartment in
Coral Springs, a town near Fort Lauderdale. They would have 50,000 golf balls stacked in milk crates in and around
the living room couches. They have since rented a meager warehouse in a nearby industrial park. But the flow of balls
in and out is staggering. A client in Finland, for example, orders 180,000 balls every six months.
The balls are cleaned of dirt and grime with a liquid formula that Lantz and Siwek keep secret, a common practice
since everyone in the recycled golf ball business believes he has a breakthrough method. Cleaning the balls usually
involves a combination of skilled scrubbing and chemicals like chlorine.
The balls are then sorted into 12 grades based on original retail price and how discolored or blemished they remain. If
the balls have been underwater only a week or two — and Lantz and Siwek return to the most heavily played courses
every 10 days — they will most likely be perfectly white and might fetch in the range of $2 or more per ball. If they
are graying or permanently scuffed, they might go to a golf course as a practice-range ball for a dime or less per ball.
Most professional golf ball divers can make in the range of $50,000 annually if they work at it year round, five days a
week. If they can pull in a million balls a year, they are in the elite category, earning perhaps $70,000.
By starting their own company and trying to eliminate the middleman, Lantz and Siwek hope to clear $100,000 each
by next year. So far, they say they have poured most of their profits back into the business.
Lantz, Siwek and other divers generally have contracts with golf courses that give them exclusive authority to raise
golf balls from all water hazards. In return, the courses and private country clubs are paid a flat fee, a per-ball fee or
given a percentage of the found balls to be resold in the pro shop. Like much in the world of golf ball diving, the
details are kept clandestine.
The art of lost golf ball discovery begins before Lantz and Siwek get to the course. Like mining prospectors, they will
examine a course map and immediately identify where they should stake their first claims.
"Most golfers stink at golf, and almost all slice," Siwek said. "Golf course designers almost always put the water
where a sliced ball will go. That's where we go."
Divers will be submerged for an hour at a time. The next skill is finding the underwater trove, a common settling point
that can produce row after row of golf balls. A good diver keeps his hands and feet moving.
"The first time I did it, I couldn't believe how many golf balls were just sitting there all lined up," Lantz said. "It was
like playing Pac-Man, you suck up all those little white dots."
They also pick up hundreds of golf clubs, entire bags of clubs and watches that have flown off players' wrists in
midswing. In some places, abandoned cars are common, too. "Down in Miami," Lantz said, "the water is like a
parking lot down there."
Frequently, the divers will be called by club pros or people who live on golf courses asking if they could look for
something specific.
"A guy called me and said his golf bag was in the pond behind his house," Lantz said. "I asked him how a whole bag
got in there and he said, `Well, me and the wife were arguing.'
"Then there's always the guys who want us to look for their watches. They always say they lost a Rolex, but we've
never found one. What we find is a Timex or a Seiko."
While searching the ponds along the 11th and 12th holes of the Boca Raton Municipal Golf Course one day recently,
Lantz and Siwek came upon a four-foot alligator. The alligator surfaced, seeming to play at the water's edge with the
bubbles the divers' air tanks had produced. But when Lantz and Siwek — heads down as they scooped up balls — got
closer to the alligator, the animal swam in the other direction.
"He's a little guy and a little afraid," Siwek said, laughing. "They get a lot more frisky in mating season."
Lantz and Siwek continued diving, unperturbed. For an hour, the shots of passing golfers strafed the pond where they
were working. Later, taking a break near the 11th tee, Lantz and Siwek struck up a conversation with a passing
foursome. When it came time to dive back into the pond, Siwek handed the golfers eight ultrawhite balls from his
satchel.
When one of the group remarked that giving away the harvest was no way to run a business, Lantz asked: "Well,
what are you going to do with those balls, fellas?"
"We'll start hitting them," the golfer said.
Lantz answered: "Then they'll be back. We'll get them next week."
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company |
