Let’s face it, risk is the nature of the game

published 29 November 2011

Golf can be a hazardous game. Years ago, while a schoolboy, I hit a tee shot which was so wayward that it struck a friend on the head. He was standing 100 yards below me at the time, and well to my left, which gives an idea of just how bad the shot was. Anyway, he survived, if a little dazed, and didn't even seem to mind overly much.

I was reminded of the incident the other day when reading about the much worse case of Anthony Phee, who was hit in the eye by a wayward drive from fellow golfer James Gordon at Niddry Castle Golf Club in Winchburgh, West Lothian. Phee sued. The Court of Session in Edinburgh ruled that Mr Gordon was 70% responsible for the incident, but that the club had to bear 30% of the blame because it hadn't posted a sign warning players that they could be struck by balls.

In the Daily Mail this week, Richard Littlejohn singles out the case as typical of what he calls "the wilder excesses of elf n' safety insanity". Even though Mr Gordon shouted fore', the traditional golfers' warning, he was found guilty of negligence and ordered to pay Mr Phee £277,000 in damages for his loss of sight in one eye. The judge also ruled that the club was liable for "their failure to place signs at appropriate places".

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Mr Phee deserves a great deal of sympathy and also, perhaps, some financial redress. He suffered much more than my childhood friend what happened to him is truly unfortunate. But, as Littlejohn says, that's what insurance is for. All the warning signs in the world would not have prevented him being hit by Mr Gordon's mis-struck ball. "It was an accident. And accidents happen."

An even worse reflection of our increasingly expensive health and safety culture is a recent decision by the local council in Lymington, Hampshire. Lymington's cricket club, one of the oldest in England, has been ordered to spend £50,000 erecting safety nets all the way round the boundary and to ensure that someone constantly patrols the perimeter during games, warning people of the dangers of flying cricket balls.

If it refuses to comply, the club could be evicted. So, says Littlejohn, the club now faces either bankruptcy to cover the cost of the netting, or "being kicked off the ground where it has been playing continuously for 175 years. It almost goes without saying that of the estimated 1.8 million balls bowled at the ground in those 175 years, not a single one has ever struck a spectator or passer-by".

This hasn't stopped Councillor Penny Jackman asserting: "The plain and frightening reality is, cricket balls have been landing at great speed a matter of inches from unsuspecting people". The councillor has a point: cricket, like golf, is potentially dangerous. But do we really want to see every urban cricket ground surrounded by netting and every golfer wearing a hard hat and goggles? That may be where we're heading. Perhaps, as Littlejohn says, we will end up in a world where all sport is banned, except possibly tiddlywinks.

Tabloid money... the German Frau flexes her muscles

"The Germans are getting a bit above themselves," says Rod Liddle in The Sun. "That's something which, from experience, tends to end badly. They've already annoyed the French a good thing to do, usually. I believe it is every man's human right to annoy the French as often as possible. But still. They've also been bullying the poor, old, useless Greeks, of course, and now they've turned their attention to us.

Well, it didn't work last time and it won't work now The very large Frau Merkel she grows fatter every time I see her and is now roughly the size of Austria insists we should be spending more money to bail out the failing European states." But this was one reason Britain didn't join the single currency. "We were a bit mistrustful of throwing in our lot with countries that spent most of the day asleep and the rest of the day enjoying a bottle of retsina or Rioja." The Greeks should "get the hell out of the euro" and the rest of Europe should watch out the Germans are behaving undemocratically once again.

The BBC has made a song and dance about cutting jobs, says Fiona McIntosh in the Daily Mirror. "So why is it still advertising posts for decision support manager', head of audiences vision multi-platform' and, my personal favourite, portfolio support co-ordinator', who, according to the job advertisement, helps out with the BBC's development of policy to identify and challenge demand requirements'? How reassuring to know that even though 50,000 NHS workers and 34,000 police are about to lose their jobs, our taxes are being used for the vital challenge of demand requirements at the BBC."

Prince Philip is a "national treasure" and wiser than his critics, says Trevor Kavanagh in The Sun. He is quite right to criticise the windmills studding our landscape as "an absolute disgrace". They are "a scandalous subsidised con trick on helpless taxpayers who are forking out a fortune when they can least afford it".