A solidly driven
golf ball, in the moment after impact, has approximately the same momentum
as the bullet fired by a .22 caliber rifle.
So what’s puzzling
isn’t really that Brassie Golf Course management and staff are treating as
unreasonable the complaints of the residents who live opposite the driving
the range along Pearson Road: residents who lived there long before there
was a Brassie, whose houses, cars, and property have all been damaged by
errant golf balls, and who feel genuinely unsafe--because they are--in their
own front yards.
What’s truly
puzzling is that Porter County officials--in whose jurisdiction the driving
range falls--and Town of Chesterton officials--in whose jurisdiction the
golf club itself falls--seem to think there’s nothing they can do to protect
folks from projectiles traveling nearly as fast a rifle bullet, and quite
capable of doing as much harm.
Two of those
residents appeared before the Town Council at its meeting Monday night:
Evelyn Komenas and Dave Evans, the former of whom has lived on Pearson Road
for 40 years, the latter of whom for 38 years. Both had stories to tell: of
golf balls doing damage to their houses, their cars, their light fixtures.
Evans himself
narrowly missed being struck by a golf ball in his front yard. “I called the
Brassie and was told ‘Don’t stand in your front yard,’” he remembered. “Then
she told me, ‘I don’t have time for this sh-t’ and she hung up on me.”
“I don’t get it,”
Evans said. “My safety should be No. 1. Who cares about the driving range?”
Evans’ suggestion,
also made by Komenas: the town should forbid the Brassie to sell range balls
to golfers until management has raised the net along the east edge of the
driving range and extended it to the north.
“I don’t see why
you can’t tell them that, until they solve the problem, they have to stop
selling golf balls,” Komenas for her part said. “My garage door is all beat
up because of golf balls. My front light was smashed. My front door is all
beat up. A window was broken. I don’t think I should be living this way.”
Komenas’ experience
of Brassie management and staff, moreover, is the same as Evans’. “They are
rude,” she said. “They don’t talk to us. The previous managers tried to work
with us. The new ownership doesn’t care. They’ve told us to move. They don’t
accommodate our concerns. They’ve never asked us how they can help us.”
Council members,
however, found about half a dozen different ways of saying there is nothing
they can do. “You want us to make a change over a part of the golf course we
have no jurisdiction over,” said Member Emerson DeLaney, R-5th. “I know
that’s not what you want to hear. But we can’t do anything about this. If it
were in town, this would not have been going on for 20 years.”
Town Manager Bernie
Doyle did report that he’s tried to reach out to Brassie management. “But
they don’t want to talk about it and referred me to their attorney,” he
said.
In the end, members
agreed to send Brassie management a strongly worded letter. “They can hang
the phone up on (Doyle) but they can’t disregard a letter,” said Member Jim
Ton, R-1st.
Members also
instructed Doyle to re-double his efforts to speak with Porter County
Commissioner Jim Biggs, R-North, in the hope of prodding the Commissioners
to take something resembling action. Doyle said that he’s attempted to call
Biggs but hasn’t been able to reach him.