Flashback to June: Ted Harrison's wife, Maureen, when the golf balls first started causing damage

RESIDENTS bombarded by stray golf balls are crying foul as well as "fore!" because they claim the nearby club's owner has broken his promise to them.

The BEN reported in June that Jeff Yates, owner of Manor Golf Club in Kearsley, had pledged changes to the course design to alleviate the ball blitz were a matter of days away.

Mr Yates said the par five hole which caused most problems has been redesigned to avoid golfers having to hit balls over the affected houses.

Two months on, though, residents of Mossfield Road insist nothing has changed.

Neighbours had spoken of a catalogue of damage caused by flying balls, with one resident, 63-year-old Dorothy Simms, counting 200 which have landed in her garden alone.

Ted Harrison, 68, told of his shock at one incident when an off-target shot flew through the open kitchen window and struck him on the knee.

But beleaguered residents say that any hopes that their ordeal might be drawing to an end have proved misplaced.

Dorothy Simms said: "We have had about 15 or 16 balls land in the garden since the course was supposed to have been altered.

"I don't think they have done anything, it's just words. It's reached the stage where one of our neighbours goes outside to shift kids away, not because he's being nasty but because he's worried they could be hit."

Mr Harrison was equally scathing. He said: "We are still getting just as many golf balls coming over. I can't see that there's anything been done. If they have done something it's not had any obvious result."

Another affected Mossfield Road neighbour is Paul McIntyre, 36, whose had a window smashed last week.

"We are still getting them," she said. "There are a lot of poor standard golfers who use the course."

But a spokeswoman for the club said the re-design had taken longer than expected because the new green had to bed in before it could be played.

She said: "The course is due to change in the next weeks. We are just waiting for the greens to be ready and the new scorecards with the new yardage to arrive.

"This is a problem we have always tried to avoid by putting up nets and speaking to the council. We've spent money on it even though the liability for any damage rests with the individual golfer rather than the club."