Today my wife and I played a course that had been greatly promoted to us by a number of friends. It lived up to all its hype. But when we were leaving hole 5, a man hit into the green.
Today my wife and I played a course that had been greatly promoted to us by a number of friends. It lived up to all its hype.
But when we were leaving hole 5, a man hit into the green. We were on the path in the left front of the green about 20 yards off the green. I waved at him to give us more time to vacate the area. No words of anger, just give us 10 more seconds to leave before hitting. He cut through the trees to approach us on the 6th tee box and asked what our problem was. I told him I would like him to give us a little more time to get away as I felt he had hit into us as the ball was about 30 yards past where we were in the cart. Not directly at us but I felt too close. He did not agree and was agitated so I just drove on to the white tees where he followed me and was very aggressive in his actions while disputing our belief that he had hit too close to us.
I walked from the cart to the tee box where he followed me with a very aggressive attitude and behavior. I told him I felt he had unnecessarily hit into us and too close for my comfort. He quickly approached me and drew back his fist. I told him “Go ahead and I will own all you have.” He responded “I have nothing.”
Then he went off on us as being “those who ruin it for him.” I took it to mean we, as Mainlanders, were not welcome here and were the cause of all his problems. He continued to be nasty and aggressive to the point it upset my wife a lot.
I went back to my cart to call the marshal and he said he too would call the marshal. I found the line busy for some time. When I finally got through I asked if we could get our money back and leave so as not to keep running into this person. He balked, saying “we do not have a marshal due to the decision of the administration.” Eventually the starter came out and had already heard the other person’s story. He felt there was always two sides, which is true. He said he would talk to him.
When we finished 9 he asked us if we would let them through so as to avoid a problem and we agreed but he then said there were two groups in their party. So we sat for about 20 minutes while 11 players went through. There were five in the group with the agitator and six in the following group. Essentially we were punished for his aggression and probably because they were “locals.” The group in front of us seemed to go out of their way to go extra slow when leaving each green.
This man has some serious anger issues and is very, very much against any Mainlander or visitor coming to Kauai. Eventually, he will hit someone or worse and cause the course a lot of real trouble. I cannot believe it is his first run-in with another golfer.
It was an unfortunate incident but for him to pursue me three times “looking for a fight” is inexcusable. You have a nice course but people with this sort of aggression against visitors will get him into some serious problems and damage the really beautiful “Garden Isle” name.
Sorry our expected nice experience was tainted by such a person.
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Bob and Linda Morriss are residents of Hemet, California.
