Errant Golf Shots Tee Off Nearby Family

The Fisher Park Golf Course is a bogey for Linda Rodvold.

Lousy golfers on the city-owned, par-3 course, she contends, are endangering her life and the lives of her family. So she is trying to shut the course down, using 1,087 golf balls collected on their property over the last five years to buttress her case.

“We live in a war zone and we can’t even defend ourselves,” she said Friday.

Although fairway property may be attractive to some people, Linda Rodvold said ducking duffers’ slices and hooks is a big handicap. Back-yard barbecues and badminton are out of the question, she said.

The problem is the third hole at Fisher Park, a 9-hole course nestled in a middle-class neighborhood of this central Washington city.

The Rodvolds’ property sits across the street, less than 50 yards to the left of the green. Golfers teeing off on the 144-yard hole routinely send balls careening into the family’s yard, she contends.

Her score card so far includes 22 dents in family vehicles, seven windows shattered on the house and garage and three car windshields destroyed.

“We’ve asked the prosecutor to close the course,” she said. “That is no place for a golf course to be, in a residential area.”

Dave Flaherty, manager of the city Park and Recreation Department, said recently he does not believe the problem is as serious as the Rodvolds maintain.

“We have tried to be accommodating,” he said, adding that the tee has been adjusted three times to try to solve the problem.

Last spring, a city employee charted activity on the third hole and found that of 2,356 tee shots, only six landed beyond the 6-foot fence ringing the course.

“One is too many if it kills one of us,” Linda Rodvold said. So far, neither she, her husband or their 10-year-old son has been hit by a ball.

In October, the family won a civil lawsuit against the golf course, receiving $2,500 for property damage and $3,700 for the disruption of “their quietude of domicile.”

Superior Court Judge Bruce P. Hanson did not rule the course a public nuisance, though. The 27-year-old course is still open and golf balls keep landing in the Rodvolds’ yard.

Neighbors don’t appear to be bothered. Kurt Weingarten, who lives a block away from the Rodvolds on the edge of the course, said he finds about one ball a week on his property but hasn’t suffered any damage.

“I don’t know anybody (who is) upset about it,” he said. “A lot of people would rather have the park than something else come in.”

Not the Rodvolds. They have asked county prosecutors to file criminal charges against the city for 1,087 counts of reckless endangerment and 1,087 counts of criminal trespass by people and golf balls, she said. That’s one count for every ball the family has confiscated since 1985, often in the face of threats from their irate owners, she said.

The family bought the house in 1984 from Linda Rodvold’s grandparents, unaware of the problem.

“They were here before the golf course and this house was here before the golf course,” she said.