It's the ultimate for many homeowners: a beautiful house, with sweeping views of a gorgeous golf course beckoning just outside the back door. Almost four million Americans are living that dream, and many of them don't even play golf. Then there are the folks whose dreams take a turn for the worse. Imagine their surprise and consternation when reality moved in, with a cascade of golf balls peppering Shangri-La each day, projectiles making the kids' sprint to the swing set as dangerous as jaywalking across a busy freeway. That's not to mention the loss of privacy, as one woman discovered while sitting in her bathroom and being confronted by a golfer at the window in search of his wayward golf ball.

Considering the more than 2,600 golf course communities in the United States--up from 1,400 a decade ago--it's inevitable that more than a few homes would be built too close to the fairway.

So it is that Golf Digest has conducted its first search for The Worst Golf Homes in America. We started by following leads in Florida, Arizona, South Carolina, Nevada, New Jersey, Missouri, Ohio and New York. We even investigated a building in Mexico so riddled with golf balls that the adjacent par 4 has become known as "The House Hole." While we found plenty of horror stories, we also discovered that one person's three-bedroom, two-bath bomb shelter is someone else's castle. With the exception of one couple, none of the residents of the homes described here are ready to sell.

These homeowners have dug in, installing metal shutters, planting 30-feet-tall pine trees and even using chicken wire to protect their windows. If a golf ball lands in their corn flakes every now and then, it's the price they are willing to pay. (Or, in some cases, it's a price they attempt to get the golfer or the golf course to pay--see the accompanying story on the legal issues involved.)

"When we built our house, we knew we were going to get hit," says Joel Empie, who lives behind the protection of $20,000 aluminum shutters in a home at the Omni Tucson National Golf Resort & Spa in Arizona. "I put myself in harm's way, so if it means a few broken windows, so be it. If I had to do it all over again, we'd build right here on this spot."

So pull up a chair, put on your hard hat and listen to these stories:

'Just hit it over this porch'

Jeff Ward couldn't believe what he was hearing. He was in his backyard gardening one day when a golf cart stopped behind him. Normally the sound of golfers wouldn't even make him turn around, because Ward and his wife, Ellie, live next to a tee box on Roses Run Country Club, a public golf course in Stow, Ohio. But on this day, it was the golfers' conversation that got his attention.

"They were getting ready to play the third hole, but one guy was already telling the other what the strategy was for the tee shot on the fourth hole," Jeff says. "The one golfer pointed toward our house and said, 'See this house? Now just hit it over this porch and you'll have a shot at the green.' It was all I could do to bite my tongue."

The 385-yard, dogleg-right, downhill par 4 makes nearly a 90-degree right turn and is reachable for big hitters who take the shortcut over the corner of the Ward's property--especially from the white tees, where the hole's length of 346 yards brings the green into play with a 250-yard drive. "If a ball catches the slope, it's reachable," Jeff says.

Despite the 100 balls a year that land somewhere on the property, the Wards don't intend to move.

"We've been here for seven years, and we're not going anywhere," Ellie says. "We knew the house would get hit by a few golf balls when we moved in. Granted, we didn't know how many, but we've learned to live with it."

'The three-window rule'

So many windows have been broken on Marion and Barbara Benton's $1.7 million plantation-style home near Myrtle Beach, S.C., they have implemented "the three-window rule." In other words, they don't bother fixing broken windows until at least three go down for the count. The Bentons say 51 windows have been broken on their three-story home since they moved in next to the Wachesaw Plantation's par-5 18th hole in 1989.

"We're 75 yards from the center of the fairway, about 210 yards from the tee . . . oh, and of course, we're on the right side of the fairway," says Marion. (A hint for those who are thinking about buying: Because most players have a tendency to slice the ball, you may want to rethink that location right of the fairway, 180 yards or so from the tee.)

Marion still remembers the day he was sitting in the Carolina room thumbing through a Reader's Digest when a ball rolled up to his feet. "The house gets hit about four times a week," he says. "We didn't realize we had a problem until we started building the home."

Marion bears no ill will toward erratic golfers--"it's part of living here," he says--but a carpenter who was installing the framing of the house was not so understanding when he was nearly skulled by a ball. When the golfer asked him to throw the ball back down, the carpenter used a nail gun to fire a peg right through the ball. Then he threw it to the golfer. "Now you've got a permanent tee," the carpenter said.