Florida has an endless number of lakes and bodies of water.
There is no telling what someone can find in them.
And a Florida diver found one treasure that left Donald Trump in stunned silence.
Florida man makes a living retrieving sunken golf balls
Jim Best was a student at the University of South Florida in 1993 when he accidentally stumbled into his career.
He found some lost golf balls in the woods near a cart path and collected enough to fill a backpack.
Best washed them and sold them to a golf shop near where he lived.
“So that’s how I fed myself! I’m like, Dude, I got dinner for the whole week in just a couple of hours!” Best exclaimed.
He graduated from college and was working in the cellphone business when he decided to become a full-time golf ball retriever.
Best became a certified scuba diver and began working for golf courses to retrieve the balls that ended up water hazards.
The legendary 17th hole of the TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida has been a goldmine for him.
I did not realize how different 17 at TPC Sawgrass used to look. Particularly that Todd Island hasn’t always been an island.
Old image: @fried_egg_golf
New image: @GettyImages pic.twitter.com/Vb6lN7XDJL— Kyle Porter (@KylePorterNS) March 12, 2025
He navigates the murky water for hours on end collecting golf balls.
“Once you do it a few times, your mind sees it without seeing it. It’s anywhere from six to 15 feet deep and maybe 20 feet in the middle, and there’s little hills and stuff like that,” Best explained.
Best has recovered as many as 6,000 golf balls in a day from the 17th hole.
“But you never get them all, ever,” Best stated. “I don’t care how good you are.”
He will take his haul of golf balls to his warehouse and sort through them to prepare them to sell.
Donald Trump has a signature golf ball
Best has found some celebrity golf balls during his days scuba diving.
A golf ball used by Tiger Woods at the peak of his career in 2005 is one of his treasured finds.
“It was elation,” Best described finding the Wood’s golf ball at TPC Sawgrass.
He has found golf balls from Rory McIlroy, Phil Mickelson, Peyton Manning, and Tom Brady but one stands out.
His most prized find is a Titleist Pro V 1x golf ball with the number 45 on it.
“I’ve got President Trump’s ball; it’s marked Donald J. Trump in red letters, I don’t know how that gets eclipsed,” Best said. “I mean, you may not like President Trump, but it’s just the fact that there’s only one of him.”
Golf balls are not his only finds in the lakes and ponds of Florida’s golf courses.
He has found cellphones, cameras, hats, and even golf clubs that ended up in the drink.
“I’ve gotten five or six Scotty Cameron putters,” Best stated. “They’re just flung out there!”
A Scotty Cameron putter can range from $400 to $400,000 like the one Tiger Woods uses.
Since it is Florida, he has run into an alligator or two.
“A few years ago, there was an 11-foot and a nine-foot alligator around the green where I was diving. I worked as long as I felt OK and they were staying at bay; if they got too curious, I got out,” Best recalled.
He was bitten by a four-foot alligator once.
“I was 18 (feet) under when he grabbed me. Their teeth are very, very sharp, especially the little ones, like a Doberman Pinscher with sharper teeth and a stronger bite,” Best explained.
A 14-foot alligator growled at him in 2007 at Innisbrook Golf Resort in Florida while his buddy was still diving.
“Totally the (most scared) I’ve been in my life,” Best said. “The hardest thing I had to do was get back in the water and get my guy out. I almost didn’t do it, but I was like, ‘Either I’m a real man or I’m not.’”
DeSantis Daily will keep you up-to-date on any new developments in this ongoing story.
