Slices, Hooks Keep Country Club Neighbor Ducking

For as long as there have been golf balls and residences on fairways, people have endured the damage and fear of errant slices and wild hooks. But since most people who live in such houses are golfers, they usually understand the vagaries of the game.

Greg Pellico of Agoura Hills isn’t a golfer. And he doesn’t understand why his house is regularly shelled by golf balls when he can’t even see the ninth fairway of the Lake Lindero Country Club from his back yard.

The balls began pelting his house and landing in his yard within weeks after he moved in, in early 1989. In May of last year, one broke a second-floor bedroom window. He later won a small claims court judgment against the club for $106.54 to cover his costs in replacing the window and filing the lawsuit. But the club, which says golfers are responsible for their own shots, has appealed.

“When I bought my house, I knew that there was a golf course around here, but when I looked at my property, I never ever in a million years would have thought I would be getting golf balls in my yard,” Pellico said during an interview at his house, one lot removed from the course.

“I can’t even see the golf course from here,” he said.

When the golf ball shattered the bedroom window, showering his bed with glass, Pellico said he called the club and asked that he be reimbursed. According to Pellico, a club official refused.

Pellico filed a lawsuit in small claims court in Calabasas and won, but two weeks ago he received a notice that the club was appealing the judgment in Van Nuys Superior Court. No court date has been set.

The dispute has been followed with interest by Pellico’s neighbors, most of whom, like him, were required to join the country club when they bought their homes. The club includes a lake and tennis courts as well as the semiprivate, nine-hole golf course. Most of the holes on the course are short, par-three holes.

Neighbor Tom Teague, who lives across Mainmast Drive from Pellico, even farther from the course, estimates that he gets a golf ball a week in his yard.

Retired aerospace worker Jerry Carnes lives on Slicers Circle, about half a block away, and said he has collected hundreds of golf balls from his yard and pool over 15 years. Carnes said he thinks golfers improperly use woods, rather than irons, on the small course and as a result hit balls beyond its boundaries.

The design of the course may also contribute to the problem, said Camarillo attorney Glenn E. Churchman, who represented a Westlake Village couple that got an undisclosed settlement from the North Ranch Country Club in 1988 because 40 golf balls a month hit their house.

“If you set up golf courses right, you can eliminate the problem,” Churchman said.

Bob Thomas, communications director for the Southern California Golf Assn., said he isn’t familiar with the Lake Lindero course, but that it would take “one big howling slice” for golfers to hit houses so far off the fairway.

The president of the club’s board of directors, Valerie Fitzharris, noted that the golf course existed before the houses were built during the early 1970s and therefore buyers should have known that golf balls would land near their homes.

Golfer Larry Zerr, who lives on the fairway of the ninth hole, said he’s lost six windows to golf balls. In some cases, sheepish golfers paid for them, and the others were covered by his homeowner’s insurance policy, he said.

Zerr built a roof over his patio to protect people sitting in his outdoor spa. The first day it was in place, it was hit by a ball. “Unfortunately, the ball bounced over and busted my next-door neighbor’s window,” he said with a chuckle. He paid for the window.

Zerr thinks Pellico’s lawsuit is frivolous.

“If a kid throws a ball through his window, is he going to sue the city of Agoura Hills? If you live near a golf course, you expect golf balls. If you live at the marina, you expect fog and rust on your car.”