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Diving for White Gold
by S.E. Kramer
May 8 2007
May 8 2007
Ever wonder what happens to all your lost golf balls? Chances are they wind up with pro divers like Dale Lahodik.
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Job title: Golf ball diver
Companies that hire them: Golf courses, golf resale companies.
How to find out about openings: Call golf courses in your area to see if they use divers.
How much you might earn: $30,000 to $100,000 a year, depending on how much time you’re in the water. Divers are typically paid eight or nine cents per ball and bring in between 2,500 and 5,000 balls a day.
Useful skills: Diving experience and scuba certification.
Number of jobs in the U.S.: A few hundred people dive for golf balls full-time, while several hundred more do it occasionally or just during the summers, according to several golf diving company estimates.
When most people think of professional divers, their minds travel to the seven seas and fill with images of Jacques Cousteau. But such exotic scenes have nothing to do with the kind of diving Dale Lahodik does. For the past 35 years, he has plumbed the murky, polluted water traps of the Professional Golf Association’s premier golf courses, collecting thousands of the 2.5 billion balls golfers lose each year.
To high-end courses like the Boca Raton Resort and Club and the P.G.A. National Resort, in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, lost golf balls are little more than trash. But to a competitive group of ball retrieval firms, it’s a $20-million-a-year business. Large golf ball resale companies like PG Professional Golf in Austin and Nitro Golf in Stuart, Florida, buy balls from golf ball divers by the thousand and then clean and repackage them to be sold at discount stores like Wal-Mart and Kmart. Smaller outfits, like East Coast Golf Ball in Pompano Beach, Florida, sell used balls over eBay and ship them in bulk to Europe. At the local level, golf ball divers may sell balls back to the course where they found them for resale in the course’s pro shop, but the resale companies rely on a largely itinerant workforce of freelance divers who travel wherever warm weather and individual whim take them.
Lahodik, however, likes to stick close to his home in Dania Beach, Florida, near Fort Lauderdale. He has gathered balls for East Coast Golf Ball, among other resellers nearby. He collects an average of 2,500 balls a day in six hours and dives five or six days a week. He’s paid per ball, picking up eight or nine cents for each one he hands over to his employer for the day. Lahodik says he racks up about $46,000 a year. His younger brother, on the other hand, is an $80,000-a-year diver: Joey Lahodik collects 4,500 to 6,000 balls a day and works at locations all over the country. But he doesn’t pocket all the money he makes; divers must cover their own transportation and motel expenses—about $30,000 a year, Dale estimates.
For divers, traveling to exotic courses isn’t exactly vacation activity. While the greens are lush and well manicured, water traps are clogged with overgrown plants, pointy branches, and pesticide runoff. In murky waters—even very shallow ones—divers can be overcome by total darkness, unable to see their scuba gauges to see how much air they have left. There’s no running tally of golf-ball-diving-related deaths, but Lahodik says he hears of at least one or two each year. And he’s had some close calls himself: About five years ago, when he was lying prone collecting balls at the bottom of a shallow water trap, a 10-foot alligator swam onto his back. He was lucky to be able to stand up and escape it, but it’s not uncommon for divers to get bitten by alligators. Another time, Lahodik became tangled in weeds at the bottom of a water trap and ran out of oxygen just as he worked his way free.
But the danger has never discouraged him. “Punching the clock just wasn’t for me,” he says. Lahodik learned to dive for golf balls at 13 while working summers in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, at the old Playboy Club, now the Grand Geneva Resort and Spa. He was taught by a seasonal diver who rented a house near his family’s home. When he turned 18, Lahodik moved to Florida and started diving full-time. “You’re just underwater, and nobody bothers you. I like the silence of it, I guess. I like the freedom,” he says. “I’ll do this until the day I die.”
Typical Day
7 to 9:30 a.m. Wake up. Hang around the house and wait for rush hour traffic to die down. Walk the dog.
9:30 to 10:30 a.m. Leave home and drive to a course.
10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Diving for balls. (Two oxygen tanks are usually enough for four to nine holes, though deeper traps take longer to dive.)
12:30 to 1 p.m. Break for bagged lunch—typically a sandwich and some fruit.
1 to 4:30 p.m. Back into the water.
4:30 to 5:30 p.m. With little interest in actually playing golf, he heads home.
Companies that hire them: Golf courses, golf resale companies.
How to find out about openings: Call golf courses in your area to see if they use divers.
How much you might earn: $30,000 to $100,000 a year, depending on how much time you’re in the water. Divers are typically paid eight or nine cents per ball and bring in between 2,500 and 5,000 balls a day.
Useful skills: Diving experience and scuba certification.
Number of jobs in the U.S.: A few hundred people dive for golf balls full-time, while several hundred more do it occasionally or just during the summers, according to several golf diving company estimates.
When most people think of professional divers, their minds travel to the seven seas and fill with images of Jacques Cousteau. But such exotic scenes have nothing to do with the kind of diving Dale Lahodik does. For the past 35 years, he has plumbed the murky, polluted water traps of the Professional Golf Association’s premier golf courses, collecting thousands of the 2.5 billion balls golfers lose each year.
To high-end courses like the Boca Raton Resort and Club and the P.G.A. National Resort, in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, lost golf balls are little more than trash. But to a competitive group of ball retrieval firms, it’s a $20-million-a-year business. Large golf ball resale companies like PG Professional Golf in Austin and Nitro Golf in Stuart, Florida, buy balls from golf ball divers by the thousand and then clean and repackage them to be sold at discount stores like Wal-Mart and Kmart. Smaller outfits, like East Coast Golf Ball in Pompano Beach, Florida, sell used balls over eBay and ship them in bulk to Europe. At the local level, golf ball divers may sell balls back to the course where they found them for resale in the course’s pro shop, but the resale companies rely on a largely itinerant workforce of freelance divers who travel wherever warm weather and individual whim take them.
Lahodik, however, likes to stick close to his home in Dania Beach, Florida, near Fort Lauderdale. He has gathered balls for East Coast Golf Ball, among other resellers nearby. He collects an average of 2,500 balls a day in six hours and dives five or six days a week. He’s paid per ball, picking up eight or nine cents for each one he hands over to his employer for the day. Lahodik says he racks up about $46,000 a year. His younger brother, on the other hand, is an $80,000-a-year diver: Joey Lahodik collects 4,500 to 6,000 balls a day and works at locations all over the country. But he doesn’t pocket all the money he makes; divers must cover their own transportation and motel expenses—about $30,000 a year, Dale estimates.
For divers, traveling to exotic courses isn’t exactly vacation activity. While the greens are lush and well manicured, water traps are clogged with overgrown plants, pointy branches, and pesticide runoff. In murky waters—even very shallow ones—divers can be overcome by total darkness, unable to see their scuba gauges to see how much air they have left. There’s no running tally of golf-ball-diving-related deaths, but Lahodik says he hears of at least one or two each year. And he’s had some close calls himself: About five years ago, when he was lying prone collecting balls at the bottom of a shallow water trap, a 10-foot alligator swam onto his back. He was lucky to be able to stand up and escape it, but it’s not uncommon for divers to get bitten by alligators. Another time, Lahodik became tangled in weeds at the bottom of a water trap and ran out of oxygen just as he worked his way free.
But the danger has never discouraged him. “Punching the clock just wasn’t for me,” he says. Lahodik learned to dive for golf balls at 13 while working summers in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, at the old Playboy Club, now the Grand Geneva Resort and Spa. He was taught by a seasonal diver who rented a house near his family’s home. When he turned 18, Lahodik moved to Florida and started diving full-time. “You’re just underwater, and nobody bothers you. I like the silence of it, I guess. I like the freedom,” he says. “I’ll do this until the day I die.”
Typical Day
7 to 9:30 a.m. Wake up. Hang around the house and wait for rush hour traffic to die down. Walk the dog.
9:30 to 10:30 a.m. Leave home and drive to a course.
10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Diving for balls. (Two oxygen tanks are usually enough for four to nine holes, though deeper traps take longer to dive.)
12:30 to 1 p.m. Break for bagged lunch—typically a sandwich and some fruit.
1 to 4:30 p.m. Back into the water.
4:30 to 5:30 p.m. With little interest in actually playing golf, he heads home.
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