AN Ex-cop says he gave up his job to earn £1.2k a day in a role you’ve probably never heard of.
John Colenutt, who served in the Met Police for 15 years, now runs GolfBalls4You where he travels to 70 golf courses to recover huge bags of balls.
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The 44-year-old and his team are regularly forced to break through the ice in freezing temperatures, can barely see underwater and have to contend with venomous snakes, aggressive fish and incoming golf balls.
Despite these challenges, John has cleared hundreds of thousands of “filthy golf balls” at depths of up to 14 metres.
They then clean and sell on to individuals and companies across Europe for a fraction of their usual price.
Each ball is worth 10p or more depending on its brand and quality, and while the majority are on the cheap side, they can still earn John thousands of pounds once they have been recovered, properly cleaned and restored.
The ex-copper pays his divers by the ball which means they don’t make the same amount of money every day.
John told MyLondon: “I still manage to play golf once in a while – stick some balls in the water, which I know I’ll get back in a few months’ time.
“The best day we’ve ever had was around 12,000 balls, but that was an exceptional day.
“We also once collected 28,500 balls in three days, which is just under two tonnes of balls. If every job was like that, I would be a rich man.”
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The most coveted is the Titelist Pro V 1 which cost around £45 for a dozen in a shop with John selling them for £25 in pearl condition.
John was working at a driving range while studying economics at the University of Kingston when he noticed hundreds of balls were being binned because they were not the club’s home brand.
He had been toying with the idea of setting up a golf ball diving business ever since he started selling second hand balls on eBay for some extra cash while studying at university.
And he finally took the plunge after going on a career break in 2015 and training to scuba dive in Spain.
It was 15 years later while on a career break that John decided to launch his company after pulling together a business plan and recruiting a team to tackle the dives with him.
“I was a student, so money was tight,” John said.
“In the summer months, I would get 100 balls a day, so I would pop them on eBay and sell them for £20, which in the late 90s was a night down the pub.”
While locating thousands of golf balls in a pond might sound straightforward, the divers have to collect them all by hand to avoid damaging the riverbed or lake bottom and often have to pick them blind due to poor visibility underwater.
He added: “You have to feel your way along the bottom because there’s basically zero visibility – you can’t see anything.
“We have these net bags which look like lobster pots and can hold around 20 kilos.”
Golf balls are not the only items which the divers, for whom it is usually a second or part-time job, find lurking beneath the surface.
John said: “We often find clubs when someone has a bad putt or chip and then lobs it into the pond. We also find phones, glasses, flags, golf buggies and lots of brollies.”
John and his team are well equipped to deal with harsh conditions, but there is no escaping the cold during the winter months, with temperatures at time close to or below zero.
They must also carry nets full of golf balls on top of their scuba gear, which can weigh up to 65 kilos combined.
Despite all of these challenges, he describes the job as “character building” and says it has allowed him to spend more time with his 10-year-old daughter Milly.
John said: “When I’m working, I’ll have golfers come up to me and say ‘oh you drew the short straw’ or ‘that’s a terrible job’, but I’ve had far worse jobs.”
