Ricocheting golf balls apparently are maiming players at the city-owned Dobson Ranch Golf Course in southwest Mesa.
A tee for driving golf on artificial green grass or green turf at practice range with golf driving range background. Playing and practicing with golf swing at golf driving range. Selective focus.
For the second time this year, the city has received a $5 million claim for an injury that a golfer claims he sustained at the course.
The Sept. 28 claim states that Kelsey Olson was using the driving range in May when a golf ball struck by a golfer in an adjacent bay struck a pole or a structural fixture and ricocheted back into the hitting bay and struck Olson’s left eye.
“Because of anticipated litigation, we cannot comment on either of the notices of claim,” city spokesman Kevin Christopher said, adding that the city was investigating the latest claim.
As for why the city hasn’t fixed the purported problem since it first arose in February, Christopher said that before the two incidents, “the City has not received a notice of claim related to Dobson Ranch Golf Course driving range for at least a decade, if not longer.”
According to the claim filed by Olson’s attorney, Eduardo Parra, “Prior to May 13, 2026, a substantially identical incident occurred at the Dobson Ranch Golf Club involving the same or a similar pole or structural fixture in the hitting bay area, resulting in serious injury to another golfer through the same ricochet mechanism.”
A man practicing shots on a mat claimed he was injured in February by another player’s golf ball that ricocheted off a pole and slammed into his groin, rupturing his left testicle and causing lasting injury. He filed a claim for $5 million.
“Kelsey sustained serious, significant, and permanent injuries to his left eye,” Parra said.
“The left eye sustained blunt force trauma resulting in traumatic disruption to the iris, significant and potentially permanent pupillary dysfunction, documented elevation of intraocular pressure, induced astigmatism, and a constellation of visual disturbances, including chronic photophobia, halos, starburst patterns, and glare that materially impair Kelsey’s ability to function in both is occupational and personal daily life.”
Parra said that Olson is under the active care of both an ophthalmologist and optometrist.
That care requires enhanced monitoring and medical management on an ongoing basis, and may require a range of future medical interventions, “the full extent of which is continually being determined given the nature and complexity of the injuries sustained,” Parra wrote.
Parra noted that Olson had previously undergone a series of elective refractive procedures, including a refractive lens exchange, which removes the eye’s natural lens and replaces it with a custom artificial intraocular lens.
The procedure corrects nearsightedness, farsightedness, astigmatism and presbyopia and is an alternative for people unable to have LASIK surgery.
Parra said that Olson had the procedures done at “substantial personal expense, which had restored functional near and intermediate vision and eliminated Kelsey’s dependence on corrective lenses.”
“The trauma caused by this incident has permanently disrupted the functional outcome of those prior procedures, rendering that investment substantially lost and imposing new and ongoing corrective lens dependencies that did not exist before the incident,” Parra said
The attorney blames the city and the golf course operator Paradigm Golf Group for Olson’s mishap.
He asserted that the pole was “negligently placed, positioned, and maintained in a location that created an unreasonable and foreseeable risk of exactly this type of ricochet injury to Kelsey lawfully using the driving range.”
“The Dobson Ranch Golf Club, its owner and its management company, owed Kelsey a duty of reasonable care to ensure that the physical layout, design and configuration of the hitting bay area did not expose patrons to foreseeable harm,” Parra wrote. “That duty was breached.”
He said that before Olson’s incident, the city and the operator had been alerted to the safety hazard stemming from the Feb. 14 incident.
“This was documented through Dobson Ranch Golf Club’s own internal incident reporting process, placing the City of Mesa and Paradigm on actual notice of the dangerous conditions created by the placement of the pole or structural fixture at issue before Kelsey sustained his injuries,” the claim states.
“Notwithstanding that actual notice, no remedial action was taken to relocate, remove, or otherwise address the hazardous condition, and the pole remained in place in the same configuration at the time of Kelsey’s injury,” it adds.
“The failure to act on known notice of a demonstrated hazard elevates the conduct of the responsible patties beyond ordinary negligence and is a material element of this claim.”
According to the claim, the dangerous condition was created by failing to design and configure the hitting bay area in conformity with generally accepted golf facility design and safety standards.
It also blames the defendants for failing to warn patrons of the foreseeable risk of golf ball ricochet caused by the pole or structural fixture and failing to take any remedial action after they received notice of the hazardous condition.
Parra said that Olson will take $5 million to settle his claim and avoid a lawsuit.
“Kelsey has sustained and will continue to sustain significant damages, including but not limited to past and future medical expenses,” he wrote.
He added those damages include “the loss of the benefit of prior elective refractive surgical procedures performed on the injured eye.
Parra also said his client has incurred “loss of earning capacity as a self-employed licensed electrician whose occupational function depends materially on near and intermediate visual acuity at working distances, past and future pain and suffering, driving impairment, permanent disfigurement, and loss of enjoyment of life.”