WHAT do Japanese frogmen and golf balls have in common? The frogmen may be the only way of retrieving hundreds of balls from the sea off the Clear Water Bay Golf and Country Club.
Organisers of the Omega PGA Championship sent out an emergency plea to local distributor Bridgestone for practice balls.
Practice balls for the pros, not the floating type dispensed to amateurs, are in short supply after the 130-odd players in the tournament consistently over hit the driving range, lobbing hundreds into the water.
Bridgestone's Tokyo office, sympathising with Hong Kong's plight, offered only one novel, if impractical, solution.
Bridgestone Tokyo replied: 'We heard that players are hitting their practice balls into the ocean, and the tournament has asked Bridgestone's local distributor to provide more balls. However, Bridgestone doesn't have any extra balls to provide for the 1995 tour.
'Please advise the staff at the tournament to try to collect balls from the ocean as much as possible and use them again. We have the same situation in Japan but divers collect the balls . . .'