By his own admission, Leshan Wannigatunga is no Tiger Woods.

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

In fact, you might say that Wanna Gittunga 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, somewhere in the rough or at the bottom of a pond.

And as it turns out, that's not much worse than most golfers fare.

On average, golfers lose four to five balls around.

If you are really bad players, that number goes up.

If you're a really good player, that number goes down.

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 Wannigatunga, 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. 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 was

guaranteed.

For the Freak economics radio network, this is the economics of everyday things.

I'm Zachary Crockin.

Today, used golf balls.

As any golfer knows, new golf balls don't come cheap.

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