ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, January 6, 1997 TAG: 9701060016
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: A Cuppa Joe
SOURCE: JOE KENNEDY
One golf ball hit Buddy Lawrence in the head.
Another hit his son, Trey, while he sat in the pool.
Another hit their dog in the mouth.
And one hit their neighbor in the leg as she stood in her yard, talking about the situation with Buddy and his wife, Connie.
If these were scenes from a movie, they'd be hilarious. But they are episodes from real life, and the Lawrences aren't laughing.
Since moving into their home off Red Lane in Roanoke County about three years ago, golf balls have rained on them.
The white, one-story house sits beside the far end of the driving range at Hanging Rock Golf Club. Golfers routinely hook shots onto their property. Errant balls put more than 100 dents in the house's aluminum siding, they said, and did an estimated $600 damage to Buddy's Ford Escort.
During the summers, more than 200 balls have arrived in a single week.
The Lawrences want the problem solved before spring. They are afraid to let their children - Trey and their 5-year-old daughter, Taylor - go outside.
In response to their complaints, club officials have erected wooden poles strung with netting 30 to 40 feet high near two sides of the property, owned by Buddy Lawrence's mother. That has blocked some of the flies, but few of the grounders.
Good fences, good neighbors
Lawrence had to build an $800 wooden fence to stop those.
Three months ago, someone's ball cracked a new window in the house. He's still waiting for it to be fixed.
The club's insurance paid to have the house re-sided with vinyl, he said.
And the Escort? Totalled in a collision he had while driving to a dealership for a second estimate.
On a cold afternoon before Christmas, he and I found a dozen balls in and around his yard. Several were stamped "Range."
He showed me the more than 100 balls he keeps in an empty soda carton. (Trey takes an iron and whacks most of them back onto the course, he said).
Because the house is 17 years old, and the public course is five, he figures the onus for a solution lies with club officials. He is tired of waiting.
Joe Thomas, Hanging Rock's president, said 65-foot poles and a new net are at the site, and an electrical contractor has been called to put them up.
He would not address the Lawrences' individual charges, but he said he didn't think they should feel aggrieved, "because we're doing everything we can there. We set the fence at a location that we thought it would be of most benefit for him. ... This is the third time we have varied the installation."
Solution not easily found
There is a scent of David and Goliath to this.
Buddy Lawrence, a truck driver, hauls bananas from Delaware to the Kroger warehouse in Salem. Connie works at Allstate Insurance on Virginia 419.
Joe Thomas is a big excavating contractor. He and his associates are can-do fellows - so why, the Lawrences wonder, can't they do what needs to be done?
"We have contacted [Lawrence] every time he's complained about it, and we've also taken steps to correct it," Thomas said. "I hope this last netting arrangement ... will solve the whole thing."
He said the club has spent more than $25,000 on the problem so far.
Buddy Lawrence says, "I don't want those golf balls flying down here and hitting my kids."
Is that too much?
Maybe club officials should declare a backwards day. The golfers could stand near the Lawrences' place and drive balls toward the clubhouse and parking lot.
The officials would quickly find out how it feels.
What's your story? Call me at 981-3256, send e-mail to kenn@roanoke.infi.net, or write to P.O. Box 2491, Roanoke 24010.
LENGTH: Medium: 80 linesby CNB