32. Used Golf Balls

Summary

The Economics of Everyday Things – Used Golf Balls

Podcast: The Economics of Everyday Things
Host: Zachary Crockett, Freakonomics Network
Episode: 32 – Used Golf Balls
Date: April 20, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Zachary Crockett explores the surprisingly intricate and lucrative world of used golf balls. What happens to the hundreds of millions of golf balls lost on American courses every year? Who recovers them—and how? Crockett unpacks the fascinating ecosystem, market dynamics, and environmental considerations behind the $200 million used golf ball industry, featuring interviews with golf ball hunters, divers, and resellers.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Magnitude of Lost Golf Balls

• Loss Rate: Most golfers lose 4–5 balls per round, and some lose more (01:26, LeSean Wanigatunga).
• Scale: Over 25 million Americans golf yearly, resulting in about 300 million lost golf balls annually (01:36, Zachary Crockett).
• Environmental & Economic Impact: Lost balls are both a costly problem for golfers and an environmental nuisance for courses.

2. The Evolution of Used Golf Ball Recovery

• Early Days: “Ball hawkers” with dogs sold recovered balls in the early 1900s, often considered trespassers (03:51, Zachary Crockett).
• Modern Market: The market exploded with the rise of e-commerce and more durable, high-end golf balls like the Titleist Pro V1 in the early 2000s (04:36, LeSean Wanigatunga).
• Market Size: The used golf ball market is now estimated at $200 million per year, dominated by a handful of large firms and many small businesses (05:32, Zachary Crockett).

3. Inside the Recovery and Resale Business

• Supply Chain:

  • Start often as a side project (Two Guys with Balls began by selling a neighbor’s collected balls, 06:26, LeSean Wanigatunga).
  • Scaling requires sourcing from bulk recovery companies that contract with golf courses (07:00, LeSean Wanigatunga).

• Role of Divers:

  • Contractors sign exclusive agreements with courses to recover balls, mostly from water hazards (10:24, Zachary Crockett).
  • Divers earn about $0.10–$0.12 per ball; a successful diver can make up to six figures annually but faces significant risks (12:56, Zachary Crockett).

• Memorable Quote:

  • “When you dive, it looks like just pearls, just the white spot showing. You can do it every three months and load up 20,000 golf balls. Almost guaranteed.” (02:26, Todd Hutchinson)
  • “You can just sit there for 20 minutes just digging in one pile of golf balls. It’s like a graveyard.” (11:08, Todd Hutchinson)

4. Dangers and Oddities of Golf Ball Diving

• Risks: The work is perilous: no visibility, threats from wildlife (alligators, snakes), and serious drowning hazards. At least half a dozen divers have died in recent years (12:56, Zachary Crockett).
• Safety Changes: After a tragic accident in 2021, companies like Ball Hawker increased safety measures, staffing someone full-time to monitor divers (12:56, Zachary Crockett).
• Weird Finds: Divers uncover more than balls—phones, umbrellas, clothing, even “a whole wardrobe” out of the lakes (12:29, Todd Hutchinson).

5. Sorting, Cleaning, and Distribution

• Processing:
  • Processing involves cleaning with industrial machines (like a potato washer), sorting by brand/model, and grading for resale (16:08, Todd Hutchinson).
  • Only about 20% of recovered balls are pristine and can command high prices; rougher balls are sold wholesale.
• Sales Channels: High-quality used balls (like Pro V1s) sell for about half the price of new ones ($2 each vs. $4–$5 new) online (17:10, Todd Hutchinson).
• Profit Margins: Resellers expect about a 50% margin on top-quality preprocessed balls (18:09, LeSean Wanigatunga).

6. Competition and Side Hustles

• Nighthawks:
  • Informal “nighthawks” hunt for balls on courses without permission, sometimes subsidizing their living or donating finds to junior programs (14:39, Zachary Crockett).
  • Hutchinson occasionally buys from these individual hunters and doesn’t view them as significant competition.

7. Consumer Skepticism and Environmental Impact

• Performance Concerns: Some golfers distrust used balls, fearing performance drop-off; studies show little to no difference (18:30, LeSean Wanigatunga, 18:46, Zachary Crockett).

• Sustainability: Reusing balls is framed as environmentally friendly, keeping nonbiodegradable materials out of landfills and water hazards (19:06, LeSean Wanigatunga).

• Notable Quote:

  • “It could well be that people who bought balls from me lost them and the divers retrieved them, sold it back to me, and I sold it back to them.” (19:06, LeSean Wanigatunga)

8. What Drives the Ball Hunters?

• “It’s like Easter egg hunting. I promise you it is.” (19:45, Todd Hutchinson)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Golf Ball Loss Frequency:
  • “I’ve been, let’s say, a struggling golfer for a long time, lost a lot of golf balls.” – LeSean Wanigatunga (00:57)
  • “On average, golfers lose four to five balls a round.” – LeSean Wanigatunga (01:26)
• Economics of Used Balls:
  • “These balls would cost on average $50 a dozen.” – LeSean Wanigatunga, on top-tier golf balls (03:13)
  • “Today, it’s estimated that used golf balls are a $200 million industry.” – Zachary Crockett (05:32)
• Danger of Diving:
  • “This type of diving is not for everybody... it’s just blind diving and it spooks a lot of people.” – Todd Hutchinson (11:57)
  • “In recent years, at least half a dozen divers have died while attempting to retrieve golf balls.” – Zachary Crockett (12:56)
• Environmental Perspective:
  • “Golf balls don’t degrade. They’re in there for a long time. So it’s more sustainable to reuse, recycle... but I guess more so for golf balls.” – LeSean Wanigatunga (19:06)
• The Thrill of Recovery:
  • “It’s like Easter egg hunting. I promise you it is.” – Todd Hutchinson (19:45)
• Origin of 'Two Guys With Balls' Company Name:
  • “One of us said, hey, we are just two guys with balls trying to sell some balls. And then that’s kind of how the name stuck.” – LeSean Wanigatunga (20:13)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [01:26] – Average golfer's loss rate of balls
• [03:51] – History of ‘ball hawkers’ and early recovery efforts
• [05:32] – Emergence of the $200M used ball industry
• [10:15] – Todd Hutchinson describes starting Ball Hawker
• [11:08] – “It’s like a graveyard” – scale of balls recovered
• [12:56] – Dangers of golf ball diving, fatalities, and new safety procedures
• [16:08] – Industrial cleaning and sorting process
• [18:09] – Economics and profit margins for resellers
• [19:06] – Environmental arguments for ball recovery
• [19:45] – The joy and culture of golf ball hunting

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Conclusion

This episode reveals how one of the most mundane features of golfing—losing balls—fuels a thriving, multi-stage industry integrating extreme labor, entrepreneurship, and environmental concerns. From daring divers to digital resellers like “Two Guys with Balls,” the story showcases how enterprising individuals and companies transform lost balls into profit while offering golfers a less expensive, greener option. The world of used golf balls is bigger, more inventive, and riskier than most might ever imagine.

Transcript

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[Zachary Crockett]

by his own admission, LeSean Wanigatunga is no Tiger Woods.

[LeSean Wanigatunga]

I've been, let's say, a struggling golfer for a long time, lost a lot of golf balls.

[Zachary Crockett]

In fact, you might say that Juanigatunga is an expert in losing golf balls. He loses around six of them every time he goes to the course. His shots end up in the woods. Some are in the rough or at the bottom of a pond. And as it turns out, that's not much worse than most golfers fare.

[LeSean Wanigatunga]

On average, golfers lose four to five balls around. If you're a really bad player, that number goes up. If you're a really good player, that number goes down.

[Zachary Crockett]

When you consider that more than 25 million Americans golf each year, well, that is a lot of golf balls. By one estimate, golfers in the US lose 300 million golf balls every year. If you could find them all and lay them end to end, the line of golf balls would stretch from New York City all the way to Hong Kong. For golfers like Wani Gatunga, this is an expensive problem. Buying new balls can add up. And for the golf courses, all those lost balls are a never ending environmental nuisance. So golfers and courses would both like to recover those lost balls. And if you're willing to brave the alligators, rusty beer cans and murky waters, there's money to be made.

[Todd Hutchinson]

When you dive, it looks like just pearls, just the white spot just showing. You can do it every three months and load up 20,000 golf balls. Almost guaranteed.

[Zachary Crockett]

For the Freakonomics radio network, this is the economics of everyday things. I'm Zachary Crockett. Today, Used golf balls as any golfer knows, new golf balls don't come cheap. On the low end, you can buy a dozen for $20 or so. But a lot of golfers don't mess around with the low end.

[LeSean Wanigatunga]

They like the good stuff at the highest end. We could call them the tour level performance golf balls. So these are balls like the Pro V1, the Callaway Chrome Soft, the tailor made DP5.

[Zachary Crockett]

Again, that's Lashawn Wanigitunga.

[LeSean Wanigatunga]

These balls would cost on average $50 a dozen.

[Zachary Crockett]

The best golf balls work out to around four to five dollars each. If you have a bad day out on the links, you can easily hack away 20 or 30 bucks worth of balls in a few hours. And when you lose one, you can't spend a whole lot of time looking for it.

[LeSean Wanigatunga]

If you're playing a competitive tournament, then I believe it's three minutes or something like that. If you're playing with a group of friends, it's until your buddies start yelling at you saying hey, come on, let's keep things moving. The etiquette is even if it's a $5 ball, just move on.

[Zachary Crockett]

But thrifty golfers have another option. They can go online and buy used golf balls for a fraction of the price. Now. People have been foraging for lost golf balls for more than 100 years. In the early 1900s, so called ball hawkers would train dogs to find balls. They'd sell them for 10 cents apiece at the clubhouse. Most of these entrepreneurs didn't have permission from the courses to romp around on the greens and they were seen as petty thieves. Over the years, a few businesses made deals with courses to collect and sell lost balls. But it wasn't until the early 2000s when the used golf ball market really took off.

[LeSean Wanigatunga]

I think a few things happened right the advent of the Internet and E commerce and at the same time the technology behind golf balls increased and it made the golf balls much better.

[Zachary Crockett]

One golf ball in particular really changed the the Titleist Pro V1. Its solid core construction and urethane coating made it more consistent and durable than other golf balls. And soon other equipment makers started to compete for the high end of the market.

[LeSean Wanigatunga]

After the COVID one was launched, a lot of the golf ball manufacturers started using better material, better technology in making sure the COVID of the ball was really insulated. So what that meant was when a golf ball was lost or when it went in the water, those balls will last a really long time we without it being damaged or without the performance being impacted.

[Zachary Crockett]

Today it's estimated that used golf balls are a $200 million industry. More than a dozen companies now retrieve, clean and sell them on The Internet. The biggest of those companies is called PG Golf. They sell around 50 million used balls every year through their website lostgolfballs.com PG Golf is owned by the same conglomerate that owns Titleist, the maker of the Pro V1. So they get to sell the same balls over and over again. But the rest of the used ball market is fragmented, made up of much smaller companies with names like Golf Ball Planet, Golf Ball Monkey and Golf Ball Nut. In addition to being a struggling golfer, Wane Gatunga runs one of those companies himself. It's called Two Guys with Balls. He got into the business seven years ago.

[LeSean Wanigatunga]

I was hanging out in the garage of a neighbor who lived down the street. He had a bunch of golf balls that he had collected playing golf. And we were looking at the balls and thinking, what do we do with all these balls?

[Zachary Crockett]

Wanigetunga set up a simple website and started selling them.

[LeSean Wanigatunga]

When we started, the way we got our golf balls was by finding golf balls when we played golf. But that was not sustainable when we needed thousands of golf balls.

[Zachary Crockett]

So Wane Gitunga started working his way up the used golf ball supply chain.

[LeSean Wanigatunga]

I'd go to golf courses and ask them, who retrieves your golf balls? Can you put me in touch with them?

[Zachary Crockett]

What he found was a large and thriving ecosystem of people who make a living hunting and diving for golf balls.

[Todd Hutchinson]

We had like 30,000 golf balls in the garage.

[Zachary Crockett]

That's coming up.

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[Zachary Crockett]

Todd Hutchinson spent more than 20 years working as an executive in the tobacco industry. To unwind, he'd go for walks on the golf course behind his house in Florida. And he started finding so many golf balls that he decided to change careers.

[Todd Hutchinson]

I own the company Ball Hawker. We're a recovery and recycling company for golf balls.

[Zachary Crockett]

The recovery process begins with a contract. Hutchinson typically signs a two year agreement with a golf course, giving him the exclusive right to collect balls on their land. Ball Hawker now has deals with 70 golf courses in Florida. They get a little money, but not much.

[Todd Hutchinson]

I Normally pay them 12 cent a

[Zachary Crockett]

ball, but Hutchinson says that most courses aren't motivated by the money.

[Todd Hutchinson]

The courses that we have, that means very little to them. When your members have have to give a million dollars just to join up,

[Zachary Crockett]

the more valuable service is the free cleanup. Because we're not talking about a few golf balls here and there. On many courses, there are tens of thousands of them at any given time.

[Todd Hutchinson]

You can just sit there for 20 minutes just digging in one pile of golf balls. It's like a graveyard.

[Zachary Crockett]

Hutchinson and his crew visit each course three to four times per year. On each visit, they can collect anywhere from 20 to 40,000 balls. Some of those are sitting right out in the open, in the woods, or on preserves next to the green. But the real hauls come from the water.

[Todd Hutchinson]

Most people are right handed, so golf balls tend to go right. If the lakes are on the right hand side, you're going to load up.

[Zachary Crockett]

Some companies use tractors to recover golf balls from the water. But most of them, like Ballhacker, enlist the services of freelance golf ball divers.

[Todd Hutchinson]

This type of diving is not for everybody. If you do commercial diving in the sea, at least you can see what you're working on, right? But this you don't see. It's just blind diving and it spooks a lot of people.

[Zachary Crockett]

Divers are hooked up to floating oxygen tanks called hookahs. For several hours, they repeatedly dive down into the cloudy water, scraping the bottom of the pond with a lobster trap. Each two minute dive can yield 300 golf balls. That's not the only thing they find.

[Todd Hutchinson]

We're cleaning out the ponds of not just golf balls, but trash. I mean, cell phones, umbrellas, old dial phones, someone throw a bong in. We find so many clubs, it's crazy. I guess some family got an argument, a man and a wife, and I was pulling clothes out of the lakes that were still on hangers. I mean, it's amazing. A whole wardrobe.

[Zachary Crockett]

Hutchinson says he pays his divers the same thing he pays the course. 10 to 12 cents per ball. On a good day, a Diver can recover 7,000 balls and earn around 800 bucks. Divers who retrieve golf balls full time can make six figures a year, but it's dangerous work. In recent years, at least half a dozen divers have died while attempting to retrieve golf balls. One of those divers was William Rainearson. He was working for Ballhawker when he drowned at Ponte Vedra Inn and club in 2021. Ballhacker was later fined $56,000 by OSHA for failing to follow proper safety procedures. Hutchinson says he now employs someone full time to monitor the divers from land. But conditions in the water still pose a threat.

[Todd Hutchinson]

There really is no visibility on all the ponds. Once you stir up the bottom, it starts coming up. So basically, eight hours to 10 hours a day, you don't see anything. You're only going by fill.

[Zachary Crockett]

That also means that divers can't see the threats that lurk beneath the surface. Hutchinson is a diver himself, and he's had a few hairy encounters with snakes and alligators.

[Todd Hutchinson]

So we were swimming and I was out there and I felt safe. And I go underneath the water and I hit something and I look up and what do I see? The silhouette of the lips, you know, they're white. Oh, my. So for safety, we have a paintball gun and we scare them off like

[Zachary Crockett]

that as well as creatures of the deep, companies like Hutchinson's have to contend with human rivalspeople who hunt for balls on golf courses without permission. They're known as nighthawks, and collecting balls is something between a hobby and a side hustle for them. They try to play golf without buying any new balls. Some of them donate their extras to junior golf programs. There's a cottage industry of companies that sell products to these nighthawks. Special glasses, flashlights, and binoculars that make it easy to spot balls. For many golfers, these ball hunters are a nuisance. But Hutchinson says they're not really a threat to his business. In fact, he often works with them.

[Todd Hutchinson]

There's a lot of people that sell us golf balls that live on the courses. They also can subsidize their living by picking up golf balls and selling them. Someone like me, you'll have guys bringing in golf balls constantly, all the time. 5, 10,000.

[Zachary Crockett]

Once Hutchinson and his team have finished scouring a course, the day's hall is put into giant tubs. Then they're loaded up into a box truck.

[Todd Hutchinson]

We keep them in the 20 gallon trash cans. They have holes in the bottoms because you don't want the water to sit there and stink up everything. The smell is horrible. Then we'll bring them back to the shop.

[Zachary Crockett]

From there, the balls are taken to a cleaning facility.

[Todd Hutchinson]

I use a potato washer for the golf balls. It will do 4,000 golf balls in five minutes. So you're constantly scooping. I think it's 12 rollers that has brushes on them, and it's just rotating them and cleaning them at the same time.

[Zachary Crockett]

Once cleaned, the balls are sorted by brand and model. And that's no small task because each brand of golf ball might have up to 20 different models. Other balls are one of a kind.

[Todd Hutchinson]

I have over 10,000 golf balls that I saved with people's pictures or comments or whatever it may be. They may have gotten married. It may be that are bachelor parties. You see pictures of golf balls that you won't show your kids. You see a lot of crazy stuff.

[Zachary Crockett]

The final stage is categorizing every used golf ball by condition. Hutchinson can sell the highest end balls like Pro V1s, for around $2 each online, around half the price they go for brand new.

[Todd Hutchinson]

Some of the bigger companies don't like that. But when you're selling a product that costs $60 a dozen brand new, and you're selling the same year in the same model golf ball for $30, it's a win win.

[Zachary Crockett]

For every million of these top end balls sold, a company like Ballhacker might expect to make around $400,000. But only around 20% of the recovered balls are in flawless condition. Most of them are a little rough around the edges and those tend to be sold wholesale to guys like LeSean, Wanigatunga, Juanigatunga's company, two guys with balls bypasses the divers, the golf courses, the cleaning and the sorting and buys pre processed balls in bulk. He pays a flat rate based on the brand and quality.

[LeSean Wanigatunga]

I buy balls anywhere from 15 cents a ball, going all the way to A$25 for the top quality.

[Zachary Crockett]

KO V1 Wani Gatunga says the economics are a win win. He sells them on his website, netting a margin of around 50%. And golfers get a more affordable alternative to buying new. But no matter how much he sings the praises of used golf balls, some golfers will always be skeptical.

[LeSean Wanigatunga]

I think there will always be a group of golfers, regardless of skill level, who will feel that the used golf ball, you know, because it's used, because it's been in the water for whatever reason, will not perform as well.

[Zachary Crockett]

There have been a few informal experiments comparing the performance of used and new golf balls, and most of them have concluded that used balls don't really have any impact on a golfer's game. But beyond the price savings, Wani Gatunga says the real benefits of buying used is environmental.

[LeSean Wanigatunga]

All these golf balls going into the water, getting lost. Golf balls don't degrade. They're in there for a long time. So it's more sustainable to reuse, recycle, you know, everything in general, but I guess more so for golf balls. And you know, some of the golf balls that I get have probably gone through that process several times where it could well be that people who bought balls from me lost them and the divers retrieved them, sold it back to me, and I sold it back to them.

[Zachary Crockett]

For others, like Todd Hutchinson, it's all about the thrill of the hunt.

[Todd Hutchinson]

It's like Easter egg hunting. I promise you it is.

[Zachary Crockett]

For the economics of everyday things. I'm Zachary Crockett. This episode was produced by Sarah Lilly and mixed by Jeremy Johnston. We had help from Daniel Moritz Rapson,

[LeSean Wanigatunga]

And I think one of us said, hey, we are just two guys with balls trying to sell some balls. And then that's kind of how the name stuck.

[Narrator/Producer]

The Freakonomics Radio Network. The hidden stuff side of everything.

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[LeSean Wanigatunga]

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