While the Augusta National Golf Club is one of the most powerful golf clubs in the country, it’s having a tough time buying a simple three-bedroom house, even though they are offering an elderly couple a "seven-figure payout."
Unfortunately, as it turns out, one couple is totally unsympathetic about the lack of ample parking during the club's annual tournament.
And from the looks of it, things aren't going to change anytime soon.
According to NJ.COM:
An entire neighborhood once sat across from Gate 6-A at the Masters. The golf club spent more than $40 million to bulldoze it into a free parking lot, and now all that remains is the simple three-bedroom house at 1112 Stanley Road that Herman and Elizabeth Thacker built in 1959.
They raised their two children there, and as that family expanded to include five grandchildren and five great-grandchildren, they still found a way to cram everybody inside those simple brick walls for the holidays.
They love it here. And so, when the man representing that powerful golf club came to inquire about buying their home to expand their parking lot, their message was polite but forceful: Thanks, but no thanks.
"We really don't want to go," Elizabeth Thacker said.
But what about the potential seven-figure payout, the type of offers that dozens of their neighbors not only couldn't refuse but jumped at the opportunity to take right to the bank?
"Money ain't everything," Herman Thacker said.
According to Trulia, homes in that area are typically worth $245,000 for a three bedroom, two-bath home.
The article also states that the golf club bought his brother's a two-story white colonial that sat on two acres of prime real estate as it wanted to to redirect Berckmans Road, the noisy street that runs along the border of the course, to improve the flow of traffic during tournament week. The new road — which the club loaned $17 million to the city to build — would go directly through his front yard.
"We didn't have a choice," Jerry Thacker was quoted saying. "We had lived there for 22 years and hoped to be there for 22 more."
Even though they are not willing to sell their home, they are not opposed to golf as their grandson, a 32-year-old golfer named Scott Brown, is currently ranked No. 46 on the PGA Tour and is attempting to qualify for the Masters.
