CAPE CORAL, Florida (10 July 2004) -- Dave Drake searches for and then lives with golf balls. Not just a few dozen like many golfers find in and around the palmetto bushes throughout Southwest Florida. No, the golf balls Drake collects he finds in zero visibility. And right now he has around 100,000 in his Cape Coral garage. Drake is a golf ball recovery diver, mining the hundreds of lakes that make up the golf course landscape from Tampa to Marco Island. A month ago at a Bonita Springs club, Drake recovered 9,000 balls from one hole in one day, a record for the former Air Force Special Forces rescue diver who has been working local courses for 13 years. Last week the Parma, Ohio, native, 52, collected 8,300 balls from one hole on Marco Island. The total for three days at the Island Club was 28,800. That translates into dollars for Drake. When Drake first started diving in 1990, he made 10 cents for every ball and he collected over 500,000 in a year, or $50,000. The price has gone up and down through the years, but presently Drake collects around 8 cents for a used ball resold to a national retailer and as much as 20 cents if he sells to a local retailer. | | Drake has a competitor in technology. Advances in golf ball technology and an increase in the number of companies attempting to enter the lucrative golf ball market has created a price war. "You can buy a box of 15 Pinnacles for $15 now," Drake said. "The thing you must do today is sort out the premium balls, like the Titleist PVI. They have more value. "Seven years ago I made $7,000 a month selling balls on the Internet. Two years ago that dropped to $2,000 a month. "Some clubs will buy the balls back that you collect at their course but a lot of upscale clubs don't like to sell used balls in the pro shop. The big companies that market used balls have cut what they pay divers or just left the business entirely." While a normal scuba diver will average two, 45-minute dives a day, Drake uses surface supplied air and can stay underwater for over four hours. He normally averages six separate 45 minutes dives in a day. SOURCE - News-Press |
