My sympathy lies with whoever was there first, and that's almost always the golfers

WSJ: Golf course living is paradise, except for the 651 balls pelting your house and yard

Erik and Athina Tenczar in 2017 bought what they thought was their forever home in Kingston, Mass., a four-bedroom colonial that sits near a left-hand dogleg on the 15th hole of the Indian Pond Country Club.

To their dismay, the Tenczars soon learned that ambitious golfers regularly attempted to cut the corner, putting their house in the line of fire.

Hundreds of golf balls have pelted their house and yard since, turning the residence, they say, into a living hell. The carnage includes eight broken windows and damage to the home’s siding and deck. They have forbidden their three young children to play in the yard, worried they could be hit by a drive.

The couple sued the club the year after moving in, alleging the barrage of balls constituted civil trespass. “We are constantly thinking about the next golf ball that’s going to hit,” Mr. Tenczar testified at a 2021 trial.

The jury awarded the Tenczars $3.5 million in damages [WTF???!!! —ED] , but the highest court of Massachusetts issued a mulligan of sorts in December 2022, throwing out the verdict and ordering a retrial, scheduled for August. A new jury will need to consider whether the number of balls hitting the home is reasonable, the court said.

Living amid the manicured beauty of a golf course has its perks, from picturesque views to quick access to the clubhouse, but it has always come with the risk of intrusion from a badly missed slice or hook.

Still, even after the construction of thousands of golf-course residential developments, there are open questions of law—and neighborly decency—about how many errant shots are too many.

Brit Stenson, the president of the American Society of Golf Course Architects, said designers use hazards, bunkers and water to direct play away from homes along holes, but it is nearly impossible for houses to avoid being hit altogether.

This often happens in real estate: people are attracted to quaint fishing villages, build condos in them, then complain that the bait barrels stink (Perkins Cove, Maine is just one example of this); or move across the street from a boatyard and discover that their winter view is one of plastic-wrapped boats, not the cute harbor they saw when buying their home on a beautiful June day (Rowayton, Connecticut); and don’t get me going on people who buy under airport’s flight paths.

I’m not completely without sympathy for buyers who naively move next to these nuisances, and I’m not a golfer, but really: think before you leap.