For $100, You Can Own Your Own Golf Course

Take my golf course, please.

Many golfers dream of owning their own course. Wayne Aekin dreams of giving one away. All you need is $100 and 250 words explaining why you want to own the Evergreen Par 3 and it can be yours.

Shortly after Aekin and his wife Cynde decided to act on a whim in 1994 and build the course in Greenwood, Del.--25 miles south of Dover--Aekin was disabled by spinal arthritis.

Unable to work the course any longer, he decided to sell it. Then he got another idea--to raffle it off.

“All you have to do is say in 250 words or less why you want to own and operate a par-3 golf course like Evergreen and it can be yours,” Aekin, 50, said last week by telephone from the course.

The entries will be judged by a panel that includes a minister, a greenskeeper and a publisher. And while that may sound like the first line of a joke--”A minister, a greenskeeper and a publisher walk into a bar . . . “--it is an assurance that the whole thing is on the up-and-up.

To get in on the action, send a self-addressed stamped envelope to: Evergreen Par 3 Essay Contest, P.O. Box 186, Harrington, Del., 19952. Or send a fax to 302-349-4653.

You’ll receive an entry form and a set of rules. Deadlines for entries is May 1--though Aekin reserves the right to extend the deadline if not enough entries are received. The winner will be announced May 15.

Aekin and his wife own a horse farm that abuts the course and run a company that develops small parcels of land for housing. They got the idea to build the course seven years ago when they were vacationing in Florida and playing a par-3 course every day.

“One day my wife said, ‘Hey, we’ve got enough land. Let’s build one of our own,”’ Aekin said.

“Once we started, it became kind of like a dream,” Aekin said. “About six months into building it, I developed some back pain that just wouldn’t go away,” he said. “They found a spot about the size of a tennis ball on my spine.”

The dream ended when it became no longer possible for Aekin to put in the kind of work to operate the course.

“I needed to curtail my physical activity,” Aekin said. “We were halfway through building it. We knew we had to finish it. We decided we would sell it once we got it built.”

Then came the idea to raffle off the place.

“We heard about a couple in Maine who held a contest to get rid of their inn,” Aekin said. “That sounded like a good idea.”

Wayne and Cynde finished building the course then decided to unload it. While the appraised value--at least $425,000, excluding all the equipment--might not attracted a lot of buyers, the chance to get the course for $100 is attractive, indeed.

Aekin figures he will need slightly more than 5,200 entries to make it worthwhile. And he will throw in all the equipment for free.

“We thought this might be more rewarding from a personal standpoint, to change someone’s life and offer them a second chance,” Aekin said.

The 18-hole course has bent grass greens, rye fairways, an underground irrigation system and is well-played by various leagues and a clientele “from 6 to 84 years old.”

“We built an 18-hole course with all of the challenges of a big course,” Aekin said.

Now, someone else has the chance to live out the challenge Wayne and Cynde Aekin started.

“We decided we had to let someone else share our dream with us,” Aekin said. “It’s a chance for someone to own a golf course and be self-employed.”

Gee, isn’t this sort of like how Roy “Tin Cup” McAvoy got started?