Making a Living from Retrieving Golfballs?

[Mr T.]

Posted on Sat, Jul. 23, 2005

Man makes his living retrieving balls from golf course lakes


TAD REEVE

Associated Press


WOODBURY, Minn. - Scott Lokken was trolling the bottom of a local pond a few years back, looking for treasure, like he does most summer days, when he emerged with a snapping turtle clamped onto his thumb. And yes, it hurt.

He has found lots of beepers and hockey pucks underwater. A lake adjacent to a clubhouse deck was filled with china dishes, no doubt from a party that really got rocking. He found a woman's purse, the last piece of evidence from a burglary.

He has found three complete sets of golf clubs, including one that had the owner's wallet in a pocket. Lokken telephoned the man to return the booty.

"He said, 'Mail me my wallet. You can keep the clubs,'" Lokken said. "I think he'd had enough of golf. Clubs don't usually get in there by accident."

But what Lokken is really looking for when he disappears into the murky deep of selected ponds in the Land of 10,000 Lakes is golf balls.

Lokken is in the business of fishing golf balls out of the ponds and lakes on metro golf courses. He services 35 courses in Minnesota and Wisconsin, working the business full time, diving for balls four or five days a week.

He clears the lakes of smaller courses once a year. But he returns to busy courses like Bunker Hills, Indian Hills, Prestwick and Tartan Park as many as five or six times a year.

On an average day, he rescues 5,000 balls from their watery grave. His single-day record: 21,000 balls at Deer Run Golf Club in Victoria. He spent 14 hours hauling out more than a ton of balls from the course situated between Lake Bavaria, Church Lake and Lake Wasserman.

Lokken is particularly excited about an upcoming trip to Falls Country Club in International Falls.

"They've never had a diver up there, so it should be fun," he said. "If the lakes are deep, they should be just loaded. I could pull 20,000 balls out of there."

Lokken gives the courses a percentage of the balls he recovers and keeps the rest. He sells most of them through his e-Bay store, the Golf Ball Shop, where he has accumulated more than 8,000 positive comments and just two negative ones over the past six years.

He sells his best balls on e-Bay for less than half the retail price, the others at a bulk rate and gives his customers a money-back guarantee.

"We have guys who buy over and over and over from us," he said. "We don't have to look for business. Most of our business is from word of mouth."

He also sells balls to golf courses outside the metro area, and one day last week, he shipped 5,000 balls to a couple of courses in the South.

He usually keeps 10,000 to 20,000 balls in the garage of his home in Hudson, Wis. His stockpile grows to 100,000 to 200,000 balls over the winter.

Diving for golf balls is a family business. For decades, Lokken's father and uncle dove for balls for about a dozen courses in the metro area. They continued their part-time business well into their 60s.

"They grew up in North Minneapolis during the Depression," Lokken said, "and when they were kids, they'd go over to Columbia Golf Course and wait in the woods for golfers to come by. Whenever somebody hit a ball over the hill, they'd run out and grab it. Pretty soon, they got the idea there were a lot of balls in the lakes.

"So, they'd hop on a streetcar out to Edina, sneak onto the course at Interlachen and wade out into the lakes. They'd grab as many balls as they could fill up in their T-shirts, then take the last streetcar that night back into town. They'd sell the balls for whatever they could get."

Lokken, 44, joined the family business in the early 1970s, when he was 11.

"It was fun," he said. "You get to go play in the mud."

But he was especially motivated by the potential for profit.

"When I was 12, I made $70 in one day back when I was used to making, like, $10 a week with my paper route. That made quite an impression."

Lokken has seen firsthand the improvement in golf balls over the past three decades.

"People still think balls get waterlogged, but they don't anymore," he said. "They haven't really been damaged by water since the '70s. They're painted nowadays like a car, with a base coat, then a clear coat that water just can't penetrate. Of all the improvements in golf technology over the years, the best are probably in the balls."

Lokken says he finds mostly low-end Top Flights and Pinnacles in the lakes. The ball his customers clamor for is the high-end Titleist Pro VI, which holds up pretty well under water.

The Callaway HX Tour is a popular ball, too, but "really gets hacked up," Lokken said.

Greens fees aren't the only things pricier at high-end courses. That's where Lokken likes to hunt for balls. "The better the course," he said, "the better the balls."

Lokken uses an air compressor in the water rather than wearing a tank on his back, for better mobility. He wears gloves only occasionally, preferring to feel for balls with his bare hands. But that can lead to trouble.

He gets lots of little cuts, usually on his hands, from broken shafts of clubs that have been hurled into the water. One recent cut caused blood poisoning and required a visit to the emergency room.

But his real concern underwater is the weeds at the bottom of a lake.

"If you're in deep water and you get caught underneath the weeds reaching for balls, that's not good," Lokken said. "I'm especially careful in those situations. That's where more than a few divers have met their end."