Thieves don wet suits and flippers to empty a golf club lake of 800 balls

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Thieves don wet suits and flippers to empty a golf club lake of 800 balls

Lexi Finnigan

16 September 2016 • 5:24pm

A pair of thieves travelled 70 miles and donned wet suits and flippers to empty a golf club lake of 800 balls, the owner has revealed.

Sarah Bathew, 50, called officers when she spotted a suspicious vehicle on Monday evening, believing someone was trying to break into her machinery shed.

But when officers called her the next day, she heard how two men had used diving equipment to collect hundreds of golf balls from the lake at Manor Golf Club, in Uttoexeter, Staffs.

Ms Bathew, who has run the £600-a-year golf club for the past 12 years, said: “It's completely bizarre.

"I was on my own in the house, which is on site when I saw this car drive past.

"I watched it a while and then it disappeared which I couldn't work out because it's a dead end.

"I called the non-emergency number and the police came out and had a look around but couldn't find them.

"They told me to go to bed and it wasn't until the next morning that an officer called and said they found them in the lake and they had 800 balls to return to me.

"I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Apparently they were there with wet suits, flippers and snorkels.

"They even had the audacity to call me the next morning and say 'can we have our balls back please?'

"I was gobsmacked. They had travelled all the way down from Barnsley, so its obviously something they go around doing a lot."

It is believed the thieves had stolen the balls - which can fetch 60p each - in order to sell them online

Ms Bathew added: "The police didn't take any further action because they returned the balls.

"But they didn't confiscate their diving equipment so they will probably go and do it again somewhere else.

"We sell golf balls for 60p, so if they were selling them for 50p that's £400 worth of balls they had.

"They've probably got quite a lucrative little business going there."

A Staffordshire Police spokesman said: "We got a call at about 10.15pm to report a vehicle on the property.

"We attended and found two males occupants in wet suits and a large quantity of golf balls in their car.

"No further action has been taken as, fundamentally, the balls were returned."
 

Hmmm, interesting.
Apparently private property, they should have just offered their services to retrieve the balls for a set rate based on the number the recovered, otherwise the balls would have just moldered on the bottom anyhow.
 

It's a common practice around my parts, just ask first. You can generally sell them back to the pro shop.

Some guy's have signed contracts and exclusive rights to certain courses.

Just got to watch for the gators and snakes in the Florida ponds.
 

I'm glad we don't get "gobsmacked" over here . Sounds Painful :tongue3: :laughing7:

Sounds to me like Miss Bathew may have been the first one to ever complain
about self employed divers over there :laughing7:
 

Hmm...my Dad has a couple of 5-gal buckets full of used golf balls. Perplexed.gif
 

When we were kids we'd do this during summer vaction & on hookey days. They'd give us 25 cents a bucket at the driving range part or we could use rental clubs & hit them. Being the schemer we were, we figured out we could hit them over the fence a couple times go pick them up and still get a quarter a bucket. Sure glad I didn't get gobsmacked or end up in prison for possession of stolen balls!!! Imagine being asked by a murderer whatcha in for? I stole someones balls just wouldn't cut it...........
 

They had alot of balls.
 

Did they use a ball detector ??
 

???gobsmacked
adjective

Extremely surprised : gobsmacked at the nomination

[1980s+; fr gob,''mouth,''and smacked, ''hit, struck,'' the theatrical gesture of clapping a hand over the mouth as a gesture of extreme surprise]
 

Reminds me when I lived on a canal development down the coast here a ways. Very expensive lace they were all $!M+properties on these private canals where everyone has a dock and boat out front. Well the black lipped mussels grow in the piles of the docks, really thick, & owners were all licking theirlips waiting for them to be big enough to harvest - ready to have a cook up of chillie mussels.
One night a team of commercial Mussel harvesters anchored up their boat out in the river, where the canals all feed into the river and sent divers up each canal with scuba gar and bags and stripped every mussel off every dock in the one night! They got a HUGE haul, and sold the lot the next morning early at the fish markets for big $$!
Owners were up in arms... talk of big laws suits and calling the police etc, but the mussels and all the evidence were long gone... & no way to prove who did it!.

CanalView21.jpg


When you see such owners with too much $$ & no taste, it almost behooves a bloke to raid their mussels! :laughing7:
 

What crosses My Mind.
On an Average day How many Golfers loose a Ball in a Lake ?
and how many Golfers frequent a Club on an Average Day ?

This Club must have the Biggest Clientele in world History or
The Worst Golfers in History .

Or they really didn't care about the balls until someone else did
 

What crosses My Mind.
On an Average day How many Golfers loose a Ball in a Lake ?
and how many Golfers frequent a Club on an Average Day ?

This Club must have the Biggest Clientele in world History or
The Worst Golfers in History .

Or they really didn't care about the balls until someone else did
Quite a few when we were doing it. Then you have to remember if you hit the big bonanza, you're working a virgin site and it'll never be that good again. Some of the ones we found were so rotted you'd pick them up & they'd literally turn to what looked like a handful of rubberbands. There's a guy I know that takes his morning walk around the golf course. He gets enough to have a tableful to sell every couple months. I think the guy can tell the brand from 20' away and knows the prices! That's more than I'd ever want to know about golfballs.

BTW if you're still using probes, they make excellent handles. Drill a hole drive a piece of welding rod in, excellent probe at almost no cost. I've even used them for handles on carving tools & gouges.

They make great projectiles for air cannons (spud guns). Don't ask me how I know this.:laughing7:
 

Collecting golf balls from water hazards is nothing new. I first heard about it in a Hardy Boys book that was written in 1972.
 

Collecting golf balls from water hazards is nothing new. I first heard about it in a Hardy Boys book that was written in 1972.

that's why 800 balls these days seems a bit high for one stealth hunt.
 

It's a common practice around my parts, just ask first. You can generally sell them back to the pro shop.

Some guy's have signed contracts and exclusive rights to certain courses.

Just got to watch for the gators and snakes in the Florida ponds.
If there are gators and snakes in the ponds, then it is not worth your life to go get the balls.
 

aeh, they can only eat so much! :tongue3::laughing9:
 

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