Like something out of the Old Testament, an affliction from on high has rained down on Faith Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Fairfax County: golf balls. One smashed the rear window of Pastor Bob Barnett’s Honda Odyssey on a Sunday.

Another crashed through a church office window, and a third plunked the youth director on the head, knocking him down as he worked with a group of children. In all, 2,637 balls pelted the property during a recent year-long period, the church claims. Members
know because they collected each one.

The source is not divine, but the adjacent TopGolf, a state-of-the-art entertainment complex that features a 76-bay, two-level driving range. When a duffer hits a slice just right, balls can zing about 350 yards over protective netting at the back edge of the range, located off of South Van Dorn Street, and fly right onto the grounds of Faith Evangelical as if it were the 18th green.

The church is so teed off that members have invoked an obscure bit of Virginia law to seek relief. They petitioned a Fairfax court for a special grand jury to decide whether TopGolf could be prosecuted as an ongoing public nuisance.

The special grand jury, which convened in October, concluded that there’s reason to pursue the misdemeanor charge. The maneuver set legal gears turning that could result in a January jury trial and possibly a $25,000 fine for TopGolf.

TopGolf is stunned, legal observers are intrigued and court officials are scrambling to understand how the little-used law works. Meanwhile, the church, which has about 350 members and has been at its current location since 1996, is forging ahead.

“They want one thing: to stop the barrage of golf balls,” said Faith Evangelical’s attorney, Benjamin T. Riddles II. “The church lives in fear of a fatal injury.”

TopGolf chief executive Joe Vrankin said the complex has done everything possible to corral balls, including spending about $350,000 on possible solutions and working closely with the church.

Vrankin ticked off a list: Warning signs have been installed, tees have been lowered and the upper deck of the range is closed when the church has Sunday services or special events. When TopGolf replaced a range on the site in 2005, it raised the height of the netting around the facility to more than 100 feet.

Read More