The Loop

Weird golf news of the week: You won't believe how many golf balls this guy stole

December 09, 2014

Meet Nathan Brown. He's 27 years old, resides in Missouri, and apparently, loves stealing golf balls.

Brown, who has been nicknamed the "golf ball bandit," recently confessed to stealing golf balls from a Maryland Heights (Mo.) driving range on three separate occasions dating back to November 2013. The total number of golf balls stolen? A whopping 42,000.

Brown stole all of the golf balls, valued about about $20,000, from the Golfport Driving Range. His most recent theft occurred in October.

"That almost put us out of business because you need golf balls to operate," owner Carol Boggs said.

"We couldn't imagine that anybody could come in here and pick up that many golf balls without somebody recognizing that there's somebody out there picking golf balls," added Boggs.

Smartly, Golfport Driving Range puts its own logo on the balls and updates it each year. That probably made it a bit tougher for Brown to unload his stolen goods (is there a black market for range balls?), though, police have only recovered about 2,000 of the golf balls so far.