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Tom Kirschner says last Thursday evening he was sitting at his computer at about 9:15 when he heard what “sounded like a shotgun blast.”
The next morning, “I got up and I walked downstairs and I looked at the window and it was cracked. And the golf ball was in the bushes,” he said.
The errant ball from the McGolf driving range broke one of Kirschner’s living room windows at Doggett Circle, but fortunately it was deflected by the screen, although it too was ruptured somewhat, he said.
A pair of state and local housing managers came to Kirschner’s apartment the next day, and his window has already been replaced. But the experience underscored how, several months after Kirschner and others called attention to the problem, there are still no answers for seniors worried about hazardous balls flying or ricocheting onto the grounds of their housing complex.
Neighbor Patty Turner said three women were sitting by the side of her building last Monday afternoon, but then a ball landed, so they moved further back. Said Kirschner: “The people can’t sit out here in the afternoon on a day like today and enjoy it.”
Larry Shea, whose 94-year-old mother lives just over the fence from McGolf, said the outcome of the last big meeting on the issue, in mid-June, was that McGolf would install new mats at its driving tees that would stop the problem of balls going over.
People got a false sense of security because for about a month afterward, there were very few balls, according to Shea. But then about two weeks ago, “they started coming in again, to the point where they’re going off the roof, they break Tom’s window, they go in between George and Patty, just missed Doris. All of a sudden they are just too many golf balls coming in again, for safety’s sake.”
He said it is very frustrating that the situation hasn’t been resolved yet.
“I hope and pray that nobody gets hit by a ball, but here we are again, close calls,” he said.
Shea said that in mid-July he and his wife came to Dedham and spoke with McGolf’s owner, Bill McInerney, at the Sweet Spot Cafe.
“He said that he was trying to get them to hurry them in there and they were supposed to be in by next week,” Shea said of the mats. “It just seems like this day keeps pushing up.”
Tom Kirschner says last Thursday evening he was sitting at his computer at about 9:15 when he heard what “sounded like a shotgun blast.”
The next morning, “I got up and I walked downstairs and I looked at the window and it was cracked. And the golf ball was in the bushes,” he said.
The errant ball from the McGolf driving range broke one of Kirschner’s living room windows at Doggett Circle, but fortunately it was deflected by the screen, although it too was ruptured somewhat, he said.
A pair of state and local housing managers came to Kirschner’s apartment the next day, and his window has already been replaced. But the experience underscored how, several months after Kirschner and others called attention to the problem, there are still no answers for seniors worried about hazardous balls flying or ricocheting onto the grounds of their housing complex.
Neighbor Patty Turner said three women were sitting by the side of her building last Monday afternoon, but then a ball landed, so they moved further back. Said Kirschner: “The people can’t sit out here in the afternoon on a day like today and enjoy it.”
Larry Shea, whose 94-year-old mother lives just over the fence from McGolf, said the outcome of the last big meeting on the issue, in mid-June, was that McGolf would install new mats at its driving tees that would stop the problem of balls going over.
People got a false sense of security because for about a month afterward, there were very few balls, according to Shea. But then about two weeks ago, “they started coming in again, to the point where they’re going off the roof, they break Tom’s window, they go in between George and Patty, just missed Doris. All of a sudden they are just too many golf balls coming in again, for safety’s sake.”
He said it is very frustrating that the situation hasn’t been resolved yet.
“I hope and pray that nobody gets hit by a ball, but here we are again, close calls,” he said.
Shea said that in mid-July he and his wife came to Dedham and spoke with McGolf’s owner, Bill McInerney, at the Sweet Spot Cafe.
“He said that he was trying to get them to hurry them in there and they were supposed to be in by next week,” Shea said of the mats. “It just seems like this day keeps pushing up.”
McInerney, Building Commissioner Ken Cimeno, and Dedham Housing Authority Executive Director Joanne Toomey could not be reached for this story.
Kirschner and Turner said the number of balls flying over has slowed down a bit. On Tuesday, a Transcript reporter counted seven of them while walking around the Doggett yard – and jumped when another bounced off the net that serves as the main protection for the property.
“It does get you nervous,” Kirschner remarked.
Since May a new net has been put up there, with the old one – which has little holes here and there – reused to block balls from the side. The part of the yard closest to McGolf has also been cordoned off with yellow caution tape. Kirschner said that has not made them safer.
“All summer long nobody could use this because of the golf balls. And that’s not right,” he said, pointing to the taped-off area.
Over two hours Tuesday evening there were only two balls that landed somewhere nearby, with the balls making loud thumps off wood.
Turner told of a much closer call on Tuesday of last week.
“George and I were sitting here, and it went between the two of us and hit the door,” she said, while hanging out on her front stoop, as usual, with her 20-year-old miniature toy poodle, Peggy Sue. “George almost caught it, but it nicked his finger.”
But Turner said she won’t be deterred from sitting there.
“I’ll just get my club out and hit them back over,” she joked.
Dedham Transcript staff writer Edward B. Colby can be reached at 781-433-8336 or ecolby@cnc.com.
