Diving for golf balls is a fair way to earn a living

Whichever way you look at it, the so-called case of the Golf Ball One – aka John Collinson, 36, jailed for six months for retrieving lost golf balls from a lake, but on Monday handed a two-year conditional discharge instead – is funny.

It is both funny-peculiar and funny-ha-ha. Had it not involved the loss of a man's freedom, it would be funny-HA-HA-HA. But it is hard to set aside the image of poor Mr Collinson being subjected to strip-searches in Leicester jail, where he spent nine days before his release pending this week's judgment by the Court of Appeal.

Mr Collinson has vowed to extract some good from his traumatic ordeal. He says he will no longer dive for balls unless a golf club has granted him permission, but such is the sympathy for him in golfing circles that most places will probably offer him a snorkel and flippers embossed with the club crest. Whatever, it takes balls to talk of positives while nursing such understandable resentment against the judicial system. He should be careful, though, since taking balls is what got him into trouble in the first place.

To recap, Mr Collinson was arrested in August last year at Whetstone Golf Club in Leicestershire when police arrived after dark to find him and a friend, Terry Rostron, wearing wetsuits and in possession of 1,158 balls. Since 1996 Mr Collinson has collected abandoned golf balls for a living, earning around £14,000 a year supplying a company called Lakeballs UK, which in turn supplies high street retailers.

Apparently, about 20 million balls are lost every year in water hazards on British golf courses. That might seem an improbably high number, although I have a friend, Davey, who almost certainly accounts for several thousand of them.

Davey is a spectacularly poor golfer whose balls find water like kestrels find fieldmice, hovering in hope, then plummeting with certainty. That's when he gets them off the ground.

But Davey, like me, does not begrudge Mr Collinson his hard-earned booty. It is true that there are few greater irritations for the club golfer than balancing on a tee-peg a pristine ball just bought for £2.60 from the professional's shop, then promptly whacking it deep into a forest or a lake. However, if Mr Collinson is resourceful enough to profit from our ineptitude, then all credit to him.

Unfortunately, Mr Justice Bray did not agree, jailing Mr Collinson at Leicester Crown Court last month with the thunderous rebuke: "It is obvious you show no remorse."

Mr Collinson this week questioned whether remorse had a place in this sorry affair. Whetstone Golf Club, after all, had declined to press charges. "Show remorse to whom," he said, "a golf ball?"

Well, it is true that the terminology of golf involves lots of references to human characteristics. Fairways have necks, bunkers have faces, greens have fringes, holes have lips, clubs have heels, people who wear tartan plus fours are silly arses, and balls have dimples. But not feelings.

Mr Collinson, by contrast, was full of feelings – shame, indignation, disbelief, anger – as he was driven off to Leicester jail to become prisoner JH6047. It is a journey he has evocatively described since being freed, recalling every detail of the sight of people shopping, the warm sunshine, the van reversing in the prison yard.

Apart from the torment of being separated from his family – his partner Annette, 11-year-old daughter and 16-year-old son – his main concern was that, as a palpable non-criminal, he might be roughed up by other prisoners. His barrister told him to keep his head down in jail and everything would be fine. Which for those of us who play golf is another fine irony, since keeping your head down is one of the sport's cardinal rules, and failure to do so often results in the ball winding up in the sort of place from which only Mr Collinson might extract it.

Indeed, there is a tale of a caddie at St Andrews whose charge kept jerking his head up at the moment of contact. He consequently kept topping the ball an untidy few yards. For 17 holes he kept his temper, but frustration was boiling up within. And on the 18th hole, when inevitably he topped the ball off the tee and into the burn, he ordered his caddie to hand over his clubs.

"I'm going to throw these bloody things into the water as well," he raged. "In fact I might jump in after them and drown myself." The weathered old caddie gave a wry smile. "Ye'll nae manage to droon yerself, sir," he said. "Ye'll nae keep yer heed doon long enough."

Mr Collinson, mercifully, no longer needs to keep his head down. In fact, I hope he feels that he can hold it up.

b.viner@independent.co.uk