Totnes divers scoop up golf balls

With some apprehension and plenty of curiosity we arrived at Dartmouth Golf & Country Club one warm sunny summer evening in July for a Golf Ball Hunt with a difference. After getting our diving gear ready we piled it and ourselves onto a golf buggy and set off following Terry the groundsman to the dive site! A good start, as these buggies were loads of fun!

We arrived at a large lake on the golf course. Our objective was to collect as many of the golf balls that had ended up in the lake as possible. Max depth - 3.5m, viz - absolute zero!

There were 6 of us diving on the Tuesday evening (a previous session had been held on Monday) and we all headed off to different corners of the lake. As you submerged the light quickly decreased. Once on the bottom in all of 3.5 m with the silt kicked up the viz descended to complete zero. You literally couldn’t see your hand in front of your face!! Fumbling in the mud we searched for golf balls and put them in our goody bags.

There were several techniques on display – some tried to stay above the silt and maintain some visibility, some (me included) went for the wildebeest approach, some surfaced every so often to drop off their booty, some descended and weren’t seen again for an hour! Some glided their hands over the smooth mud to feel for the balls while others tried digging into the glutinous ooze for older balls. Occasionally someone would quite literally bump into someone else! Who was the person that grabbed hold of my fins!?

Whatever approach you took we managed to collect a phenomenal number of golf balls – 4800 over the 2 evenings!!

We all had a great time and couldn’t stop talking about it as we tucked into our supper, which was generously provided for us by Dartmouth Golf Club.

All the balls we recovered will be washed and sorted. The reasonable ones will be sold by the Golf Club back to their members or be used in their driving range. Totnes BSAC get 10p for every ball recovered – re-usable or not. 5p goes to Club funds and 5p goes to the South Hams Radio Trust, a charity, which among other things, encourages local young people to get involved in sport.

We are hoping to run another Golf Ball Hunt in late summer. I hope you can make it. I can’t say 'see you there' because I almost certainly won’t see you at all, though we may bump into each other!!

Ruth Swarbrick - 16 July 2004