There is no end to it. Cloudy, sunny, windy, calm. If it’s golfing weather, that means golf balls will be raining down on my house, property, and hapless guests who come to visit me. Not even pets are safe. 

I own a home along the 11th fairway of the Cove View Golf Course in Richfield, Utah. I’ve been living there for eight years. It’s a beautiful spot (see photo below from my yard looking across the 11th fairway and up into the mountains).

But it’s not as idyllic as it may look. I’ve been in a constant battle with both the course and the city since I bought the place over being barraged on a daily basis by golf balls.

View from my backyard of the 11th fairway at Cove View Golf Course, Richfield, Utah. A beautiful spot if there wasn’t continual bombardment by golf balls.

I’m on the right side of the fairway, about 150 yards up from the tee box. Apparently that’s a perfect landing spot for sliced balls.

The golf balls started raining down. And didn’t stop. It almost never stops — only if the weather is too inclement for golfers to be out, or it’s dark. 

My garage doors — and they are not standard-sized garage doors, they’re enormous, and big enough to accommodate a tractor trailer — have been destroyed and need to be replaced. That, however, won’t solve the underlying problem. That would be like treating someone suffering a compound fracture with a band-aid. It’s not going to get better. You’re not addressing the root cause of the problem. 

So here we are. Eight years after I bought the house, eight years of being literally hammered with golf balls, and the problem still persists. When I initially bought the home, golfer traffic at the course was relatively low. An occasional golf ball would be the problem. However, in about 2020, things picked up on the course. The number of golfers grew; the errant golf balls got more intense. 

Nothing the golf course or the city is doing or has done has resolved this problem. They’ve placed nets up; they’re not high enough. They moved the tee box on the 11th up, shortening the hole from a par 5 to a par 3; my other neighbors started to complain, so they moved the tee box back to it’s original spot. The logic for doing that? “Well, Steve’s gonna sue us anyway, so …”