COEUR D'ALENE, Idaho. – If you’re an enterprising diver, the Coeur d’Alene Resort golf course may have an opportunity for you.
As of now, there’s a higher than normal amount of golf balls sitting on the lakebed beneath the resort’s world famous floating green.
Traditionally, divers will retrieve balls from the lake throughout the season. The divers pay for the right to get the balls and then typically sell the used balls. But for some reason, the resort hasn’t had any divers for the last couple of seasons.
"It should be interesting,” diver Mike Holbart said. Holbart has never retrieved balls himself, but has donned his scuba gear as a contractor to perform maintenance on the floating green.
"You go along and you'll see banks of them. A hundred of them lined up. It's kind of like looking for Easter eggs,” he said.
According to the resort, over 25,000 balls are collected from the lake at the end of each season. By KREM estimates, there’s roughly 50,000 balls sitting underwater. Golf course staff placed their estimate lower, at 30,000 balls.
It’s not clear why any divers and the resort haven’t come to terms to retrieve the balls. A resort spokesperson previously told KREM that there are “plenty” of talented and qualified divers in the area, but the opportunity wasn't a good fit for the divers.
"If there's a lot of them, I'm sure it's pretty cool how they collect [underwater]” Holbart said.
"I can't say I've taken a 5-gallon pan over the years,” he said, chuckling.