Did diver leave something fishy behind in golf course ponds?

SAN MARCOS, Texas — Ever wonder what happens to all the golf balls that plop, dribble or bounce into ponds and other water hazards on the thousands of golf courses across the country?

Some sink slowly into the mud. Some are raked out by golfers who hate spending money on balls. Some are surreptitiously snatched up during the night by entrepreneurs who want to make a few bucks reselling them.

But the vast majority are removed by professional golf-ball retrieval companies that regularly employ scuba divers to probe and poke around for the spheres. The balls are cleaned and resold for as much as $1 or $2 less than a new ball — even though some have been hit only once.

These are the sorts of businesses that don't get much publicity. Until, that is, the recent federal indictment of William Lamar Stoner, who has made a living being one of those scuba-diving golf-ball retrievers.

Stoner was charged with illegally transporting Asian grass carp into Texas from Arkansas, so he could stock them in golf-course ponds and make his job easier. The fish are voracious eaters of underwater vegetation and illegal in Texas and all but eight other states without a permit.

"Think of an underwater cow," said Mike Freeze, owner of Keo Fish Farm in Keo, Ark., where Stoner purchased the fish, which are legal in Arkansas.

During the two decades he has been the general manager at the Quail Creek Country Club in San Marcos, Texas, John Ferguson Jr. has had a deal with Stoner to pay the club 10 cents for each ball that Stoner retrieved from the course's ponds. Stoner also returned at no cost all the driving-range balls that had wound up in a pond by the first hole.

"It was a good arrangement," Ferguson said.

But about a year ago, Ferguson spotted Stoner on a golf cart next to a pond on the third hole.

"He said he was doing pond maintenance," Ferguson said.

Ferguson didn't think much of the incident until months later when U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agents appeared, demanding to inspect his ponds. Stoner, it turned out, had been indicted by a federal grand jury in Texarkana, Texas, on charges of illegally transporting Asian grass carp from Arkansas to Texas to stock in golf-course ponds.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service official Mike Merida in Fort Worth, said, "You put them in a pond, and they will wipe out the vegetation. The ponds where [Stoner] released these fish at Quail Creek are in a flood plain and they are not too far from the San Marcos River. And that's where an endangered species of Texas wild rice grows."

Grass carp are tightly regulated because they are an invasive species.

Stoner was arrested Dec. 20, as he crossed the Arkansas border into Texas. He has pleaded not guilty to charges of illegally transporting 350 grass carp into the state.

Randal Lee, Stoner's lawyer, said his client "goes all over the country and makes a good living retrieving golf balls."

"He told me that many years ago, he had a subcontractor who got tangled up in the weeds doing this and drowned," Lee said.

Ferguson said the federal wildlife agents used a chemical to kill the grass carp at Quail Creek and ultimately 47 fish were taken out. He has since restocked the ponds with koi — a similar fish that is legal.