High winds, amateur tee shots scatter Harbour Town spectators

Bill Paladino was walking along the cart path when the warning sounded.

“FORE RIGHT!” yelled a volunteer on the right side of the fairway.

The errant drive struck Paladino below the shoulder, hitting the back of his gray “U.S.M.C.” sweatshirt with a muted thud.

“Is someone hit?” another volunteer said. “Is he OK?”

“You need some ice?” one of Paladino’s friends asked him.

“Maybe I can have a little ice,” Paladino, a Marine Corps veteran, said in his New Jersey accent. “It’s just a flesh wound. If it’d hit me in the head, I’d have been fine.”

He laughed.

A friend retrieved some ice from a concession stand near Hole No. 10’s fairway at Harbour Town Golf Links. An amateur — playing in Wednesday’s pro-am ahead of the RBC Heritage — walked down the fairway and stepped outside the ropes to apologize for the misfire. He and Paladino posed for a picture. Paladino held the bag of ice to his shoulder.

The cart path and pedestrian walkway to the right of No. 10 was busy Wednesday. It’s a popular spot, according to Heritage regulars. You can watch golfers’ tee shots on No. 10, see groups’ approaches to No. 15 and watch players’ drives on No. 16. A prime spot to watch the action on three holes and not too far from the excitement of the par-3 17th.

But that same walkway was, well, a bit treacherous on this day. The high winds were generally unkind to amateurs’ tee shots. Moments after Paladino was hit, a volunteer farther down and off the side of the fairway was struck.

“It feels great,” Richard Martin, a tournament volunteer from Sun City, said as he leaned against a golf cart and pointed at his foot. It’s Martin’s fifth year as a volunteer. It was the first time he’d been hit.

“One house, two people and one tree,” spectator Jim Ferreira said, referring to the landing spots of tee shots he’d witnessed in a 30-minute span.

Tournament volunteer Louis Guagenti, who was watching for errant shots along the right side of the fairway closer to the tee box, described the walkway beside No. 10 as “busy.”

“When the (RBC Heritage) starts, we’ll put two more of us out here,” Guagenti said.

It’s rare for PGA Tour pros to misfire so wildly, he said. Not as rare for amateurs battling the wind and worrying about the water along the left side of No. 10’s fairway.

“I’ve been dodging bullets my whole life,” Paladino joked as he clutched his bag of ice.

As a Marine infantryman he served 18 months in southeast Asia. He was wounded twice in Vietnam, he said. Once by friendly fire, once by enemy fire.

“Close to here,” he said, referring to one of the wounds, pointing to his back — near the spot the golf ball had struck him.

That was 1969, about 17 miles southwest of Da Nang.

“Shrapnel burns more,” he said.

This story was originally published April 13, 2016 at 3:59 PM with the headline "High winds, amateur tee shots scatter Harbour Town spectators."