It's raining high-speed golf balls in Observatory and residents are not impressed

Good Friday turned out to be less than peaceful for Observatory Golf Club members and a businessman living across the street, when an ongoing spat over golf balls and broken windows apparently ended in a trail of pool acid on the greens.

The club’s assistant manager, Teboho Matabane, said a groundsman witnessed a man stomping onto the ninth green of one of  Johannesburg's oldest golf courses, angrily pouring pool acid onto the smooth grass before hurling away an empty bottle.

Matabane claims that businessman Lesego Molwantwa — who has denied vandalising the golf course — then stormed up to the clubhouse to complain to him.

“I asked him what the problem was, and he said his window had been smashed for the second time in a week. He had approached the golfers and said they just showed him the middle finger,” Matabane told the Sunday Times. 

Molwantwa’s home, which he and his wife designed, has large picture windows overlooking the golf course, with smaller windows around the sides. They have erected a large net across the front of their property.

Molwantwa, who is an avid golfer himself, told the  Sunday Times he had incurred immense financial costs to try to protect his home and family from the ongoing hazard of high-speed golf balls raining down on his property.

“Even on the hottest day, my four-year-old cannot swim in the pool.”

Three shattered windows, a R40,000 dent in the door of his wife’s car, glass shards scattered across his desk and study floor backed his complaints. 

“Nobody should be forced to live like this,” he said, pointing to a large tarpaulin hung to protect his upstairs outdoor braai and entertainment deck, golf balls littering his neighbour’s roof and a pile of stored glass offcuts ready for future repairs. 

His gardener, who works for several homeowners in the street, said one of his main tasks was to collect golf balls that land in gardens. 

“Yoh! It’s so dangerous, you can lose your teeth. Once I was almost hit in the mouth, another time on the arm. It happens many, many times,” he said, gesturing to a full basket of collected balls. 

Molwantwa, who is an avid golfer himself,  says he has repeatedly tried to communicate with the club to find a solution — but his ideas have all been rejected.

He asked them to put up nets and barricades around their property but was told the club doesn’t have the funds for that.

“We have had enough now. We have secured a lawyer, we have our facts and case law and we are taking this to court,” he said.

Golf club captain Simon Leventhorpe said the club was also taking legal advice. He said though they were still waiting for full damage reports on the acid incident, he expected  the cost to be at least R200,000 to replace the entire green as repairing only the damaged portions would not be sufficient.

A temporary green would also have to be set up while the repairs were being done, and this would in turn result in further income losses for the club as players may want to go to another club rather than skirt around a problematic ninth hole. 

“We've laid criminal charges, and we are taking legal advice on the damage done to the green,” Leventhorpe said.

The Observatory Golf Club has opened a case at the Yeoville police station.

According to the golf club's records, Molwantwa had informed them of one smashed window in 2021, nothing in 2022 and two incidents this year.

“The club had met Molwantwa before, and with his lawyers, and it was agreed that his net is insufficient and needs tightening. But he never did anything about it,” Leventhorpe said. 

Another resident, who has lived in the street just over five years, said she refused to allow her four-year-old to play outside when the golfers are out because she is terrified the child will be struck. She said she had an average of eight to 10 balls hurtling into her property every weekend. 

“Over the years we experienced 20 water leaks in the house. We didn’t know what was causing them until the plumber went onto the roof and found we had 30 smashed roof tiles and the rain was getting in,” she said. 

Her frustrations were echoed by long-term resident Jean Visini, who has also suffered a few close calls. A ball ricocheted into her bathroom while she was in it, two vehicles on her property had been struck and a ball had whacked her front door so hard she thought they had been shot. She tiled the top of her garden wall to protect it from regular hits, only for the tiles to be smashed. She considers sitting on her bedroom balcony a risky activity.

Visini has lived in her house since 1987 and said the problems had intensified over the past 15 years after the municipality felled the trees lining the club perimeter, which had served as an effective barrier.