Last summer – June to be precise – I had my first experience of GB……… not Geoff Blyth but….. golf balling. For those of you not familiar with this activity, let me explain.
Any golfers amongst you may well know that the ball doesn’t always end up where you had hoped it would! In fact, more than a few end up in the lake(s) that often scattered across golf courses. These are known to golfers as ‘lake balls’.
I am sure it does not take a genius to realise that this is where divers come into the picture.
Thus it was that in June last year Mel Fox and I made a rendezvous with Chas Allcorn, Mike Smith and friends at junction 2 of the M40. Mike (or was it Chas?) then navigated us through the back lanes to a golf course near Slough - actually nicer than it sounds. It turned out that the club steward was a friend of Mike’s, being a former business customer.
I had always wanted to have a go at golf balling, but way back in the past the then DO had decreed that lowly sports divers were not sufficiently qualified to participate. So quite some years ago had I acted as shore party when Chas and others trawled the lakes at Stock Brook Manor.
We put our suits on in the car park and were then equipped by Chas with an essential piece of kit. Take a goody bag and cable tie its mouth round a piece of sawn-off plastic piping: result, one bag with funnel. So we set off on foot for the lake, with Mike driving our cylinders etc on a golf cart. Once there, we kitted up as normal and suspended our goody bags from ourselves. This is where I cursed Buddy (the company, not a diver!) for not providing D rings on the shoulder straps of my jacket. Consequently my bag was suspended from the D rings near the bottom of my jacket and swung quite low. I felt like a Scotsman with an oversized sporran!
Golf club lakes are not provided with steps or ramps, unlike a swimming pool or Stoney Cove. Fortunately, however, there happened to be a rope attached to a post by the shore of the lake. This came in very useful for easing ones aged self into the water. Once there, each person picked their spot and started work.
Chas had explained that the edges of the lake were lined with gravel over a width of roughly a metre. Any balls falling in near the edge would therefore roll gently down this gravel slope towards the centre of the lake and come to rest where the mud and goo began. So the best place to forage was just in from the edge, at the point where this mud started.
So I floated around gently in zero viz (and I mean zero), feeling my way round the bottom. With a little practice, I got to know what a golf ball felt like through my gloves, although Mike had said he would overlook the occasional round stone, in view of the fact that I was a golf balling novice. I soon started filling up my goody bag, remarking that balls are like the proverbial No.11 bus – nothing for ages and then a whole lot come along together.
I felt quite peaceful floating around in the pitch black and mused on the fact that some people pay good money in a spa to float around in a tank of water in the dark surrounded by natural vegetation. Here were we, not only doing the same free of charge but actually earning money for the club.
Eventually I had filled my bag to the extent that it was becoming cumbersome. So I popped up to the surface to see where I was (underwater navigation is obviously impossible in these circumstances) and swam gently to the side. I managed to stand up sufficiently to unclip the bag and hand it to Mike on the side. I now had some appreciation of what it must be like to be a cow with full udders, desperate to be milked!
Mike took my bag and handed me an empty one. Back I went for another session. When I decided that I had found as many as I was likely to, I surfaced and crawled out of the lake in a not very dignified way with a half full bag.
Mike had meanwhile been emptying the goody bags into black sacks and weighing them to estimate how balls we had(!). Out total was a little under 2000, and Mike was quite disappointed at this. He felt that the lake was not quite ‘ripe’ and could with advantage have been left for another year, as he had hoped for a haul of more like 5000 balls.
We walked back to the club house, avoiding the plentiful duck poo round the lake, for a well earned shower. We then enjoyed a free pint and lunch, courtesy of the golf club, chatting at the same time with the steward. He kindly rounded up our notional total to 2000 balls, which netted the club a useful £200.
I enjoyed the experienced and would do it again. I think any moderately experienced diver who is not fazed by pitch black water and is willing to do a solo dive can take part. Typically, these lakes are only 2 or 3 metres deep, so it is not far to the surface if you do have any problems.
Geoff Blyth
This article first appeared in the March 2005 issue of Billericay Diver
