Wetass Career #62–Golf Ball Fisherman: Next time you are on a golf course and see the duffers dunking shot after shot into the water hazards, ask yourself: what happens to all those lost balls? The answer is: Michael Aux Tinee. He’s the guy in funny waders, carrying a big feed bag, who’s trudging, swimming and diving through the water hazards, scooping up ball after ball with his self-designed “Mr. Lucky” retrieval probe. Sounds like a miserable way to make a living, but Aux Tinee and the hundreds of other golf ball fishermen that troll through the nation’s golf courses are onto something good. The average golfer loses 5 balls a round (it’s a $200 million a year industry, bro). Aux Tinee retrieves anywhere from 150,000 to 300,000 balls a year, and gets between thirty cents and two dollars (according to the quality) for each one. You do the math. Check out this profile of Aux Tinee if you’re ready to start going to golf courses to MAKE money, instead of just lose balls. Here’s an excerpt:

“Water moccasins can be tricky. Shards of glass may pierce his waders. Stones are murder on the knees. And it’s no picnic diving through inky, chemical-clouded water with people taking aim at you. But that’s not the worst part of the job. “It’s the turtles — they’ll take your finger right off,” says Michael Aux Tinee, Golf Ball Diver…

The money may be quick, but it can come at a price. And though Aux Tinee has never been hurt, some of his fellow divers have not been so lucky. In June of 2001, Emmett Clive Willis III drowned while hunting balls in Hickory, North Carolina. The same fate met Mark Feher while he was working a course in Boynton Beach, Florida. Some divers have nearly lost their lives amid the branches and fishing line that often rest at pond’s bottom. In swampy Florida, alligators are a major hazard.”

Or you can read about Norm Spahn, who dives Sawgrass and has a personal record of 15,000 balls in a single day. He’s been attacked by an alligator, bitten three times by water moccasins, and had crabs and snapping turtles hanging off him more times than he can count. In addition to golf balls, he’s hauled out about 500 golf clubs…

Is this a great country, or what…?



Scavenger Spahn: “Hey, you big baby, do you mind if I putt out WITH YOUR CLUB…?”