Golfer hits house.
Golfer hits another golfer.
Tree hits Golfer.
Golfer brains innocent goose.
Does any of this sound like fun?
If golf is supposed to be this serene and rejuvenating walk in the park, why are there so many bizarre and unsettling things that happen on the course?
Probably because you're putting what is essentially a metal weapon in everyone's hand and guaranteeing them almost certain failure and extreme frustration when they try to hit a little white ball over hundreds of yards.
Throw in tract houses and busy roads just yards from the courses, and nature, human and otherwise, and there's a whole lot worse than can happen than making a triple bogey.
Sometimes, the golf gods aren't the only ones laying judgment. Cops and judges and lawyers have to intervene, and that is to the great fascination of John "Jack" H. Minan.
Minan, 64, is a 30-year professor of law at the University of San Diego and an avid golfer who plays most of his rounds at Admiral Baker and Balboa Park. About eight years ago he began researching court cases involving golf, and though he was waylaid by various career commitments, his 120-page book, "The Little Green Book of Golf Law," is now in print, expected to be in stores later this month.
"This was a small project, but it's kind of taken on a life of its own," Minan said last week.
Minan has been pleasantly surprised by the positive feedback he's received, even before the book is on the shelves. One major golf magazine already has called, and Minan is being asked to speak in front of major corporations.
It really should not be a surprise. We can all relate. Virtually every golfer has nervously watched an awful slice sail toward a row of houses, waiting for the crash of a window - or worse, a blood-curdling scream. And Minan has done a fantastic job with this very original effort, giving us 19 horrible and humorous cases we love to read about, and pray they never happen to us.
Not all of the stories are about mishaps. One is about Tiger Woods trying to protect the use of his image, another highlights the battle over the copying of famous golf holes at the Tour 18 courses in Texas. There's a story about an out-of-work engineer who got slapped down by the IRS for trying to write off all of his golf, and a golfer who successfully sued a car dealership when he got a hole-in-one and a car - after the dealer forgot to take down his promotional sign.
But the best stories involve the frailties of golfers and those around them.
Minan is quick to point out that he's not trying to give out legal advice, but to entertain.
LOTS OF DAMAGE
A golf ball is hard enough to break stuff and injure people, and some of the most entertaining things happen when the pill collides with something. At Dallas Athletic Country Club, Minan reports, three families bought homes adjacent to the sixth hole, and Edward Malouf's Oldsmobile Cutlass, Harry Hollander's Porsche and C.M. Presley's Ford Mustang were getting hammered with dents by wayward shots.
The course had a policy of sending the offending golfers to the house if they could be found, but often they scurried away like rats, and so the trio sued the golf course, claiming the golf balls were trespassing. The court ruled against them, noting that the balls didn't have much of a say in where they landed.
In Rhode Island, the property line of Eileen Hennessey's condo was only 14 feet from the edge of the 14th fairway of Louisquisset Golf Club. She claimed balls peppered her home at least 10 times a day. But one September day, she got beaned in the head while out smelling her flowers. The culprit: the club's assistant pro, Michael Pyne.
Imagine Pyne's embarrassment when she sued him for assault and battery. Rhode Island's Supreme Court rejected her claim, but Minan concludes, "I'm reasonably confident that she never took golf lessons from Michael."
Friends, unfortunately, sometimes nail friends with their ball, and that's what happened to Gerald Zuria in Florida. He was walking back to his cart when his buddy and neophyte golfer, Victor Hydel, finally caught a shot flush and drilled Zuria in the head, which injured him, but not seriously.
Zuria sued Hydel for golfing negligence, but Hydel countered that injury is common and foreseeable on the course, and that he didn't mean to hit his (now-ex) friend.
The case got bogged down in legal wranglings, but Minan cites other rulings that have basically determined that as long as you're not intentionally trying to hit somebody or playing recklessly, you're probably off the hook. And oh by the way, yelling "Fore!" can always help your case.
OUT ON A LIMB
One of Minan's favorites is a 1996 case involving Oaks North, the executive course in San Diego. Stanley Kurash was playing the ninth hole on the North Course near the driving range when he heard a loud "crack!" He thought it was a ball coming from the range, but then he heard a second crack, and a tree limb 12 inches in diameter came crashing down on him.
Kurash was trapped under the limb, and his playing partner had to extricate him. He suffered a broken nose and rib, and while the 74-year-old sued J.C. Resorts, claiming it had been negligent in not trimming the tree, Kurash's wife, Naomi, also sued, claiming her husband had lost sexual function because of the accident.
J.C. Resorts argued that it kept the branches thick in order to protect golfers from errant balls, and as for Stanley's sex life, it was suggested that maybe Stanley, given his age, had been suffering sexual dysfunction before he got clobbered.
The Kurashes won. Stanley got $55,000 for his injuries, and Naomi received $5,000 for loss of consortium.
TEMPER, TEMPER
In fits of anger, there are club breakers and club throwers, but when Terry Pupus had a meltdown on a Maui course in 1997, he sadly went to the extreme. Miffed by his tee shot on the 16th hole, Pupus attacked a Nene goose, the state bird of Hawaii. He beat it to death, said a witness, by taking several "Jose Canseco-style" swings with his Big Bertha driver.
Pupus was arrested, charged with cruelty to an animal, and convicted. He was fined $4,000, given a year of probation, and though the court didn't demand all his golf clubs, it did take away the murder weapon, his driver.
And for those who pound a few beers or cocktails at the 19th hole, Minan offers a cautionary tale.
Iowa golfer Walter Olson gulped down at least 12 beers at the local club, and when he stumbled out to the parking lot to leave, he couldn't find his clubs. He confronted a pro shop employee, Edward Dolan, who said he didn't know where the clubs were.
An irate Olson attacked Dolan, pulled his coat over his head and punched him enough to injure him.
Then - d'oh! - Olson realized he'd already put his clubs in the trunk, before his 12 beers.
Unfortunately, justice wasn't served in this one. A jury awarded Dolan $70,000, but Olson filed bankruptcy. And when Dolan eventually sued Olson's insurance company, State Farm, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that it couldn't side with the plaintiff because the lower courts had not determined that Olson's attack was intentional, because he was so drunk. State Farm's policy precluded it paying damages suffered when the act was intentional.
"We are not inclined," the court said, "to create a situation where the more drunk an insured can prove himself to be, the more likely he will have insurance coverage."
