Source: The Boston Globe
On Monday afternoon, Abington police raced to the Strawberry Valley Golf Course after receiving a call that two girls had possibly fallen into a frozen pond on the property.
The search was called off at 5:30 p.m., when the girls were found to be home, safe and sound. They had spent the day sledding at the town's public golf course, which had been turned into a wintry playground by the season's first major snowstorm.
Though it was a false alarm and no one was hurt, the incident highlights a challenge facing golf course operators today: Should they allow the winter pastime on their slopes?
Two years ago, the Plymouth Country Club banned sledders, skiers, and deer hunters from its 161 acres in order to prevent lawsuits and damage to the course, said Allen R. Tassinari, who serves on the greens committee for the private club.
"We don't allow sledding. We have in the past, but there was considerable damage done to the greens," said Tassinari. "And it's a case of liability. We have some very steep hills. We want to be good neighbors, but we're just trying to protect ourselves."
It's the same worry elsewhere. North of Boston, the Merrimack Golf Course in Methuen and the North Andover Country Club also prohibit sledding.
"It's a shame. We don't want to do it, but the insurance rates have gotten too high," said George Kattar, who bought the Merrimack Golf Course with his brothers 30 years ago but planted a "No Trespassing" sign on the course for the first time last month. "It's not like we want to be Scrooge, but we have to do this."
Not all courses have adopted the strict stance.
Parents can still tote their youngsters to the slopes at the Scituate Country Club, and sledders continue to be welcome at the town-owned South Shore Country Club in Hingham, and Presidents Golf Course in Quincy.
"We don't ban sledding at all," said Carl Miner, assistant superintendent at Presidents, whose notoriously hilly fairways flummox golfers but are always good for a slide in winter.
"It's always been a popular spot," Miner said. "It's a fun time everyone really enjoys the hills out here. If there's enough snow covering them, it doesn't affect anything. There's really no long-range effect [on the greens], as far as I've seen."
The activity is more "a liability issue that affects everyone," said Michael Stachowicz, a board member of the Golf Course Superintendents Association of New England and the director of greens and grounds at the Dedham Country and Polo Cub, where sledding is only allowed on certain parts of the course.
"We try to put up a snow fence to keep them off areas where we don't want them and make it accessible to members only," said Stachowicz. "If you can't control where they're sliding, it can lead up to ice buildup, and those greens will take longer to get into play in the spring. The snowboarders like to go and use bunkers as well, and that can lead to damaging the integrity of them."
Sledding bans on public and private courses alike are being an issue as development in Greater Boston has seeped into nearly every available nook and cranny, stealing many of the out-of-the-way hills children enjoyed freely a generation ago. For hills that are still open, insurance premiums jumped "anywhere from 30 to 100 percent since 9/11," said Richard Look, spokesman for Venture Insurance in Pennsylvania, which covers more than 1,000 golf courses across the country.
At the same time, after a boom in the 1990s, the golf industry has begun to slump. While the number of US golf facilities has increased 3 percent from 2000, the number of rounds played decreased 5 percent, according to the National Golf Foundation.
The resulting decrease in revenue and increase in expenses has left course managers scrambling to cut costs. Since sledding doesn't add to the bottom line but exposes golf courses to significant risk, many courses are posting bigger and bolder "No Trespassing" signs and policing the rules more seriously in the hopes the reduced exposure will lower premiums.
The number of accidents each year depends on the amount of snow, according to Mark Ross, a spokesman for the US Consumer Product Safety Commission. Last year there were 30,300 sledding-related accidents treated in emergency rooms across the country. In 2000 that number was 38,500, and in 2002 it was 25,000, according to the commission.
But as people have become quicker to sue, the fear of lawsuits and the expense of defending against them has jumped markedly, said several lawyers and insurers who specialize in golf course coverage and litigation.
Litigation costs for insurance companies soared in the last 12 years from $130 billion in 1990 to $233 billion in 2002, according to the Insurance Institute of America, based in New York. A single exorbitant jury award can echo across an industry, said Michael Kraker, a Minnesota lawyer who specializes in golf course litigation.
"It can have a huge effect across the board," Kraker said.
One such award came down in April when a jury ordered the town of Greenwich, Conn., to pay more than $6 million to a urological surgeon whose sled slammed into a drainage ditch near the its civic center. The victim was hospitalized for 12 days and missed five months of work. In the lawsuit, he said the town had failed to inspect and maintain the uncovered drainage ditch, and failed to warn residents of the danger.
Greenwich First Selectman Jim Lash said the town's insurance increased 25 percent and their deductible doubled from $500,000 to $1 million.
In Abington, fears that someone fell through the ice at Strawberry Valley Golf Course last Monday proved unfounded. Local police have responded to the course in the past only for minor injuries, said Deputy Police Chief Christopher Cutter.
But sledding is "nothing we promote, or enforce," he said. "During the snow season when there's snow on the hill, especially at peak times, on the weekend and on school vacations, we generally respond to a few calls for minor bumps and scrapes - kids crashing into each other and things like that."
For now, sledding continues at the nine-hole municipal golf course, as it has for years.
Said Cutter: "That's the hill where I went."
