Team DailyPedia
Fourteen years ago, Glenn Berger was jobless and resorted to stealing golf balls out of a lake at a golf course near where he lived. “And I realised that wasn’t the way to make money,” he admitted.
So, he decided to make use of his time by diving into lakes in Florida to look for lost golf balls and sell them for a minimum of $1 each.
His hard work would pay off later on when he eventually made a million dollars.
According to CCTVNews, although his work seems pretty easy and simple, it isn’t quite so in reality. Scouring golf course ponds involves daily encounters with tables, golf carts, lawn mowers, snakes, and even alligators. “One time I felt my arm in an alligator’s mouth. I couldn’t see anything, but I almost flew out of the water. There was no blood, so I think the gator just mouthed me without biting down.”
Comparing his job to scuba diving, Berger said that scuba diving is a dangerous sport as it is. However, unlike here where people can usually see, he cannot see anything when he jump into ponds. “So I have fish, snakes, turtles, and all those fun things running into me all the time.”
In a report by USA Today, Berger’s claim of making millions by hunting for golf balls is completely plausible, stating that the average golf course hosts about 30,000 18-hole rounds every year. “Let’s make a very conservative estimate an average golfer will lose 1.5 balls to a water hazard every 18 holes. That would mean Berger would need exclusive rights once-a-year to retrieve all the golf balls from about 34 different courses’ water hazards. If he does that, he’d hit his ‘between 1.3 and 1.7 million golf balls’ figure. A bit of a stretch, but certainly doable.”
In an interview with Caters TV, Berger revealed that he has managed to collect 1.5 million balls every year which gave him a huge profit of 15 million US dollars in sales over time.
Featured image via edition.cnn.com
