IN FOCUS: GOLF INSURANCE:  PHILIP REIDon how accidents can occur on a golf
course and why it is prudent for golfers to invest as little as €20 per annum to protect themselves

IN THE general scheme of things, you wouldn’t put golf high on the list of dangerous sports. Not alongside extreme sports such as bull-fighting or cliff climbing or skydiving, for sure. And, yet, golf – a pursuit which Mark Twain once described as “a good walk spoilt” – has inherent dangers, mainly because none of us are perfect and, unfortunately, errant golf shots can turn a golf ball into a dangerous missile which can maim and even prove fatal.

Indeed, some tales collected from court rooms around the globe provide horror stories that wouldn’t be out of place in a Stephen King novel – among them the oft-quoted case of the Turkish sailor in 1998 who was part of the crew of the Aslan I which docked in Greenore port and, with some time at hand, wandered onto the local golf course, sat on a wooden bench and was hit by a tee-shot that resulted in the seaman losing an eye.

A study conducted in 2008 by the Mater Hospital in Dublin in fact found that there had been 10 incidents – seven adults and three teenagers – of people suffering the loss of an eye in golf-related incidents here in recent years, having been struck by standing too close to a swinging golf club or hit by a golf ball travelling with velocity.

Erdal Sahin, the Turkish seaman in the Greenore case, was awarded over €300,000 in a court action – the judge held the golfer who took the tee shot and the golf club to be 50 per cent liable each, as the bench was located in front of the teeing ground.

While that close-to-home case is the one most often highlighted in terms of the need for players to take out personal golf insurance, there are other incidents from around the world that reinforce such a necessity.

One fatal incident on a course occurred in Arlington in Texas in 2005, where a father and son were playing a round of golf. The father advanced some 150 yards down the fairway and stood behind a tree while his son played a tee shot.

“The ball took a crazy ricochet off a branch of that tree and hit my dad in the back of the neck,” the son, Scott Parlin, recalled in a subsequent television documentary recorded last year to highlight the sport’s danger. “He didn’t fall down, but he grabbed the spot where the ball hit him.”

Within minutes, Dale Parlin collapsed and was rushed to Arlington Memorial Hospital. He died the next day of a cerebral haemorrhage.

Through the years, there have been other documented cases of death on the golf course including one in the RA’s ‘Golfer’s Handbook’ which highlights the possible dangers. It tells the scary story that befell a Canadian, Harold Kalles of Toronto, who died in 1963 after the shaft of his golf club broke against a tree as he attempted to play a recovery shot from a bunker. The broken shaft caught him in the throat and he died some days later in hospital.

And a court case in the UK in 1998 also showed that even where a golfer shouts a warning – “Fore!” – after hitting an errant shot, it doesn’t provide immunity from an action. In that case, the 16-handicapper was ordered to pay €81,000 after a wayward shot hit a fellow golfer.

The player in question had been trying to play over a ditch towards the green but his ball struck a tree and went off at an angle towards a player standing almost 90 yards away on an adjoining fairway.

Even though the player who hit the shot shouted “fore,” the victim didn’t hear the warning and sustained injuries to his eye.

In another case brought to a court in the United States in 2008, a man – in New Jersey – had glass embedded in his eye when a lawnmower kicked up a golf ball and sent it through his car windshield.

Accidents, unfortunately, happen. As such, golf’s governing bodies here, the ILGU and the GUI, encourage their clubs to get members to take out specialised personal golf insurance cover.

There is a perception among many club members that such personal insurance is automatically included in their subscription fee – but this is not usually the case, although the additional premium in the range of €20 per year would seem to be one of the most sensible decisions that any golfer could make.

Seamus Smith, the General Secretary of the GUI, says that they “can’t insist” on all members taking out personal golf insurance but it is something they strongly advocate.

It is estimated that about 50 per cent of GUI members – in the region of 200,000 players – actively avail of personal golf insurance while it is of course mandatory for all golf clubs to have public liability cover.

While it is not compulsory for club members to take out such personal cover, a spokesman for market leaders Chartis Insurance – which runs the GUI-endorsed ‘Golfsure’ policy – describes it as a “no brainer” for club members to take out such policies, which have an annual cost of €20 (£15 in Northern Ireland) and cover such eventualities as “all risks” on golf equipment up to €4,000, covering bar bills (up to €250) for a golfer who records an albatross or a hole-in-one during an official club competition and even the cost of replacing car keys lost on a golf club premises.

More pertinently, though, the ‘Golfsure’ policy covers public liability and public accident should the unthinkable happen on the course, including:

• Public Liability up to €2.6 million

• Accidental death up to €150,000

• Major disability such as permanent total disablement, loss of limbs, loss of eyes up to €150,000

• Medical expenses covered up to €3,500 in Ireland and up to €30,000 elsewhere in the world

• Dental expenses up to €3,000

• Facial Scarring up to €3,000

Taking out personal golf insurance would seem, as the man said, to be a “no-brainer.”

For a cost of just about €1.50 per month, less than half the price of a single golf ball, that financial outlay will bring with it some peace of mind . . . but no guarantee that it will improve your golf game, unfortunately.