Golf: Lost ball? See you later

If you're a duffer or a hacker, Stephen Martinez is making a living from your mistakes. Martinez dives the water hazards on Florida's golf courses to retrieve stray balls, known by divers as "pearls" or "white gold".

Occasionally, an alligator gets in the way.

In his neoprene dive suit, flippers and mask, Martinez looks out of place among golfers in checked slacks and spikes on this boiling hot day.

He prepares to waddle into the lake that runs the length of the Addison Reserve golf course in Delray Beach. A nightmare for many golfers who hook their shots, this murky lake is a goldmine for divers.

"The golfball divers probably have the weirdest jobs on golf courses," said Dave Youpa, manager of Southern California's Industry Hills course.

"They come in during the day while people are playing their rounds. It's funny because often you just see bubbles in the ponds, and you think, 'What the heck?"'

Many divers are approached with comments like "Nice golf outfit" or "Hey, if you find Titleists, they're all mine", said Paul Lovelace, owner of Golf Ball Paul's, a ball retrieval and resale company in Kansas City, Missouri.

Lovelace, a former oil-rig diver, has been in the golfball diving business for 23 years. Martinez, a recreational diver with an interest in marine science, stumbled into his profession 15 years ago.

They say the money is good - if you're willing to put up with occupational hazards that include bites from snapping turtles, attacks from alligators and attitudes from territorial otters or beavers.

A snapping turtle punctured the glass of Martinez's mask with its beak a few months ago. "Without my mask, I would have lost my nose," he said. "I've learned not to touch."

Divers can earn about 8USc a ball and recover an average of between 3000 and 5000 a day.

Lovelace, who subcontracts other divers to help to retrieve balls on about 250 courses across the Midwest, expects to sell about 4 million reclaimed balls this year, almost double last year's haul.

Independent divers or contractors like Golf Ball Paul's usually pay courses a fee to get permission to dive in their ponds. In other cases, the courses pay divers by the ball and resell them in their own shops for about half the price they cost new, or use them for their driving ranges.

A Titleist Pro V1 golfball - a high-quality model popular for its accuracy and control - costs about US$4 new. Americans spent US$885 million on new golfballs in 2002, says the National Golf Foundation.

Although golfball diving can be lucrative, it's a demanding occupation. The job requires five to eight hours spent in zero-visibility waters often polluted with fertilisers and littered with sharp clamshells and bottle shards.

"It was hard to get used to not seeing anything," Lovelace said. "Visibility is nil, and that made me feel pretty claustrophobic at first. You are just feeling your way around."

There's another reason the ponds are called water hazards: Sometimes they're inhabited by toothy critters which don't appreciate visitors.

"It's scary when you are grabbing something that isn't a golfball," Lovelace said.

Martinez agrees. Three minutes into a dive at the Links of Boynton Beach in Florida last April, he felt a tug on his tank.

"At first, I was thinking turtle or catfish, but then I knew by the strength of the jerk," recalled Martinez, who dives about 15 courses for the company.

"I went to grab my knife from my right leg but my left hand was exposed. Then she bit."

The next he knew, Martinez was being pulled by a 2.5m female alligator towards the centre of the lake.

"This is what you always think about," he said. "Do not freeze up, do not lock up. I need to get to the front of her head."

Martinez fought to gain a position at the front of the gator's head and started to punch the animal.

"While my left hand was still in her mouth, I felt her tongue - it was the strangest thing. I started to punch her. She was a tough cookie. After about 20 punches, she let go."

Martinez darted to the surface and yelled for help while swimming to the edge of the lake. Startled golfers heard him and raced to pull him out. He had 12 puncture wounds.

The gator fared worse: It was caught and killed.

"I got cocky," Martinez said. "If you keep getting away with it, you think you're almost bulletproof. Now I surface more often to look around. When somebody told me there were gators on a course, I thought 'money' because few divers would go there."

But the best hidden treasures are clubs hurled by frustrated golfers into ponds that can be up to 20m deep.

"It's rare to not find clubs," said Lovelace, who puts new grips on them for resale.

Rick Batista, owner of Rick's Golf Balls in Los Angeles, has about 10,000 clubs collected in the past 20 years, many found in ponds. The walls of his garage are covered with racks of clubs.

Batista didn't know finding golf balls was going to be a lifelong venture when he first searched for them at the age of 8, skimming nearby golf course lakes on his surfboard.

Fortunately for the divers, duffers rarely attempt to retrieve their possessions on their own. There are exceptions.

During one of his jobs, Martinez saw an exasperated golfer throw his entire bag of clubs into a lake.

"What he realised when he stomped off was that his car keys were in the bag," Martinez said. "He got soaking wet when he waded into the pond trying to get the bag out, but he couldn't get it. So I helped him out."

- BLOOMBERG