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In Anand v. Kapoor, 61 A.D.3d 787, 877 N.Y.S.2d 425 (2d Dept. 2009), an action to recover damages for personal injuries resulting from a golfer's misdirected shot, the trial court granted the defendant golfer's motion for summary judgment. The appellatecourt affirmed, ruling that (1) the defendant golfer did not owe the plaintiff golfer a duty to give a warning of his intent to hit the golf ball; (2) the plaintiff assumed the risk of being struck by a poorly executed shot; and (3) the defendant golfer's failure to yell "fore" did not constitute an unreasonably increased risk which the plaintiff did not assume by playing golf.

A defendant unreasonably increases the risks inherent in a sport only where his or her conduct is both without competitive purpose and constitutes a flagrant infraction unrelated to the normal method of playing the game. In Anand, the defendant's allegedly negligent failure to have shouted out a warning before hitting the ball did not constitute such a flagrant and unexpected infraction of a rule.

Although the claim asserted in Anand failed, the results in similar cases nationally are mixed. In a collection of cases covering practically any imaginable scenario in which someone is struck by a golf ball, David M. Holliday, Annotation, Liability to One Struck by Golf Ball, 53 A.L.R.4th 282, § 2[a] (1987 & Supp. 2009), the author summarized the law on this subject, as follows:

"It is established that the mere fact that a person is struck by a golf ball driven by one playing a game of golf does not constitute proof of negligence on the part of the golfer who hit the ball, and that a golfer is only required to exercise ordinary care for the safety of persons reasonably within the range of danger of being struck by the ball. Although a golfer about to hit a ball must, in the exercise of ordinary care, give an adequate and timely warning to those who are unaware of his intention to play and who may be endangered by the play, this duty does not extend to those persons who are not in the line of play, if danger to them is not reasonably to be anticipated. Additionally, where a person is in a place where he should be reasonably safe from the danger of being struck by a golfer's shot, and he is aware of the golfer's intention to play, there is no duty to warn since an oral or audible warning would be superfluous."

"Recovery for injuries by a person struck by a golf ball may also be barred because the person assumed the risk of injury ordinarily incident to the game of golf, which was obvious or foreseeable. However, one does not assume the risk of being struck by a golf ball as a result of the negligence of another, although recovery may be precluded because of the injured person's contributory negligence."