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Steve Politi, a columnist for The Star-Ledger and NJ.com, has a fantastic profile of Augusta, Ga. residents Herman and Elizabeth Thacker, the senior couple standing up to the rich green jacketed members of the powerful, exclusive private club.
Augusta National is used to getting its way. It tells the world’s top golfers who can play and who can’t in the first major tournament of the year. It tells TV powers CBS, ESPN and The Golf Channel how they can and can’t cover the tournament. And Masters officials famously threw a hissy fit when women’s activist Martha Burk demanded the previously all-male club open its rolls to females.
But Augusta National can’t tell the Thackers what to do, according to Politi. The couple has repeatedly turned down big bucks for the modest, three-bedroom home at 1112 Stanley Road it built in 1959. That’s the Thackers’ home. As long as they live, the Thackers will continue to welcome their two children, five grandchildren and five great-grandchildren at their lonely holdout near Gate 6-A.
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Other homeowners in their old neighborhood sold out to Augusta over the past 15 years. Augusta spent $40 million to bulldoze those homes — and turn them into a parking lot. So the Thackers’ home is the golf equivalent of the Little House on the Prairie. Via Politi:
One of the Thackers’ grandchildren is 32-year-old PGA Tour pro Scott Brown. He publicly supported his grandparents on Twitter:
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The couple grimly admitted to Politi that the green jackets will probably get their mitts on the house eventually. And it will be replaced by asphalt like the rest. Until then, it’s not for sale. As Politi wrote:
Meanwhile, the 2016 Masters is under way, its echoes reaching the little house at 1112 Stanley Road.
