Wanted: Golf Balls For Soldiers in Iraq

A California group is trying to help soldiers serving in Iraq enjoy their free time. Some soldiers are trying to get in some golf, but violence in the country is making that next to impossible. You can call Marshall Crisman a golf ball hunter, because for two hours every day for the last five weeks, hes been searching for lost golf balls on the outskirts of the Ridgemark Golf and Country Club in Hollister, California. "Its being a kid again. Its an Easter egg hunt every day. Theyre everywhere, so you just have to look for them behind objects, sitting underneath things. You just watch for the white color, and they should become pretty evident," Crisman says. Crisman has collected more than 10,000 golf balls, 300 of them in one day. "I just cleaned this place up yesterday, but theres just a couple been knocked in here already," says Crisman. Youre probably thinking hes a golf ball collector, right? No way: its something bigger than that. All the balls he collects, along with the ones people are dropping off inside the Ridgemark Pro Golf Shop, are headed to Iraq. "Can you imagine that somebody hit a golf ball here, and its going to be one of the longest shots theyve ever hit cause it will end up in Iraq?" Crisman says. "The troops over there, they hit the golf balls once. They hit them into sniper laden areas and hit them into areas that are filled with mines," says Ridgemark Golf and Country Club General Manager Eric Dietz. That makes it impossible for the troops to retrieve their golf balls, so supplies are running low. Word has spread fast, and Ridgemark has collected more than 43,000 golf balls, many of them from the public, and most of them already boxed up and ready to be shipped out. "It has nothing to do with politics. Its for the love of the game: those that are against the war, those that are for the war. This is about the troops," Dietz says. And for Marshall Crisman, the hunt continues. DHL has offered to ship all the golf balls to Iraq free of charge. Ridgemark Golf and Country Club will continue collecting golf balls until July fourth.