This 500 yard house from Augusta National is hot craving

Ed. Note: House in 1112 Stanley Road in Augusta, GA., It looks memorable – red brick, black shutters, four windows on the facade – but, in fact, is everything else. That’s because of the will of its owner, Elizabeth Thacker (Her late husband Herman died in 2019)which has rejected Augusta National’s advances to buy the property, which is only a short par-5 from the club gates and is the last home still staying in Stanley Drive. In a story published earlier this week, Fox Business confirmed He Elizabeth Thacker, 92, still owns the house and still has no interest in selling. Golf.com covered the back of the property in 2017. We reprinted that article below.

***

Of all PGA Tour professionals who grew up dreaming of playing in MasterOnly Scott Brown can say that he did this only 500 meters from the gates of the Augusta National Club. Brown’s grandparents, Herman and Elizabeth Thacker, raised it to 1112 Stanley Drive in a three-bedroom brick house they built in 1959, beyond what is now the port 6.

But the neighborhood has changed radically since Brown’s youth. What was once a strange, modest house community was laid in the name of defensive parking. Over the past 15 years, The National Golf Club Augusta It has gone into a purchasing entertainment, spending a $ 40 million reported to expand its limits.

Many of the monuments around Thacker’s house are gone, or soon will. Last October, after 25 years in the corner of Old Berckmans and Washington RD., Jay’s Music sold its 0.73 hectare parcel in Berckman Residency Properties LLC for $ 5.35 million. A few months later Pep Boys Auto Repair Shop repair sold his property for $ 6.9 million. Progress has swallowed the neighborhood where Brown, the winner of Puerto Rico open of 2013, once played on the street. Only one house remains in Stanley Drive and its owners do not plan to move at any time soon.

“Where are we going?” Herman Thacker, 84, said in an interview at his home on Tuesday morning. “That’s the house. We love it here.”

The place is full of memories. It is where Brown took some of his early divas, and where his grandfather placed a four -hole course in the courtyard for cutting competitions.

“I’ve watched him playing since he was on the knee up in a duck,” Herman said.

As Brown grew up, his grandparents started a Sunday The tradition of accelerating in the 16th hole and placing their green folding chairs after green, then return home and make breakfast before returning to see the last round. Herman used a clumsy camera to shoot Brown Ayga’s first tour, and proudly proudly proud of his nephew’s individual titles while he was at the University of South Carolina Aiken. Not long ago, Thacker bought a computer so he could follow his nephew at PGA Tour. He hopes that one day Brown will soon qualify to play in his first masters.

“He will be there one day, I just know it, but I don’t know if I will be around to see what he did,” Herman said.

Herman is even safer than his home, where he has built a Spanish courtyard and new deck in the last 10 years, will remain intact, although the club increases efforts to make sure it disappears. Less than six months ago, the club hired a crane and crew and planted a dozen Holly tree and an oak tree along the Berckmans road that block the house of Thackers. Trees look like they were there for 25 years.

Herman and Elizabeth are not the only Thackers who have felt the impact of Augusta National to expand. When the club looked to redirect the Berckmans road, borrowing $ 17 million in the city to improve the tour of the tournament, the new road was expected to cross directly through the front yard of Jerry Thacker, Herman’s brother. The club bought its two -storey white colonial and the other two properties that the family owned with $ 3.6 million. (Augusta Steve Ethun national spokesman refused to comment on every figure quoted in this story. “We do not publicly discuss the club’s business,” he said.)

Despite seven -figure sales prices, Herman says he has not been tempted to sell.

“I told my wife another day that we have to make the price as high as they can’t help but reject it,” he said.

However, a few years ago, he fired another of his properties, in which Brown lived for a short time after he got married. One day, Walton L. “Buzzy” Johnson, senior tournament director, called to see if Thackers were interested in selling. Elizabeth was baking a cake; Herman was in Lowe’s. When he returned home, the couple heard Johnson present what Herman called “a funny low offer”.

“Is that after all?” Asked Herman. “He said,” Yes. “So I said, ‘We’ll see you then’ and we went out.

Thackers were finally sold for $ 1.2 million.

Living in a sea of ​​cars parked for a week a year is just a small hassle, Thackers say, and does not prevent them from going for their daily routines. Come on the masters week, Herman still fires in the grill while Elizabeth drops the pine straw in the yard and keeps its landscape immaculate. The other 51 weeks they enjoy their intimacy.

Every time so often, Johnson stops to remind Thackers that the club is still interested in the last home staying in Stanley Drive.

“The last time he came from him said,” What if I could build a house just like what you have, just better with nine -legged ceilings and extra wide formation? “,” Said Thacker. “I said, ‘Where are you going to put it? There is no land available, not in Richmond County.’ He said: ‘We can work it.’ We told them we would give them the first choice if we ever decide to sell. “

But the club should not hold its breath. Especially if the house eventually passes to another owner.

“If they give me,” said Brown, “Augusta will never have it.”