Poetic License

Wayne Eakin is living proof that America hasn't made much progress in its battle against one of its greatest menaces: daytime television.

It was because he heard about a show on "Oprah" that he was convinced: Yes, this is the way. The show in question featured the owner of an inn in Maine, who sold the property by asking prospective buyers to submit a small fee that accompanied an essay on why they wanted to own an inn. The sellers wanted 5,000 entries but received 2,500 more than that, and at $100 per they got the asking price --and profit -- they were seeking.

"We finally tracked them down after about a week of trying," Eakin explained, "and we even went to Portland, Maine, to meet. We called the lady who won, and she was thoroughly tickled. She said it had changed their lives."

Eakin, a 50-year-old transplanted Texan who settled in Delaware almost 30 years ago, didn't have an inn to sell. He was selling an 18-hole golf course: the Greenwood Par 3.

The prospect of becoming the owner of a golf course by penning a 250-word essay and forking over a hundred bucks was quite a novelty ---- but not the end-all gimmick Eakin hoped it would be. When his initial May 1 deadline arrived he was still far shy, not even at 50 percent, of his goal. He proceeded to extend the deadline another two months, to July 1, but three weeks before that date he had received just barely more than half the number he needed to reach his asking price of $525,000. (Last year the property was listed in a commercial appraisal as being worth $425,000.)

Eakin can point to any number of reasons why his fax machine didn't ring as often, not the least of which was the media's doting fascination over you-know-who. "I called every magazine I could get my hands on," he says, "and they were fairly interested, but not really. They were interested in covering Tiger Woods."

After Ron Sirak, the primary golf writer for The Associated Press, wrote a story in mid-February, Eakin's fax machine churned non-stop with requests for entries. "We have one phone line," he noted, "and I had no idea what kind of response I'd get, but we got more than 6,000 requests for entry forms. We got them from everywhere imaginable -- Thailand, Denmark, South Africa, Russia, Argentina, Guam, Japan, Jamaica, Philippines, and as late as yesterday I got one from Crete. . . . And I don't even know where that is."

Eakin, who never even played the game until his wife, Cynde, signed him up for lessons and took him on a golf vacation in 1992, built the Greenwood Par 3 to provide the southern Delaware community with an economical family entertainment complex. Anyone can play all day long for just $10, two bucks more than the price for seniors.

"We wanted to compliment the community, to have a place where young people and families could come and have a few hours of entertainment," says Eakin, who is forced to sell the property because of a deteriorating back problem that limits the number of hours he's able to spend in the day-to-day operations of running the business. "If we don't get enough entries we'll just have to auction it off, and right now I'm sitting here with half of what we expected. . . . No matter what happens, I've got to get rid of the course. I'm burning the candle at both ends, and I know life doesn't always turn out the way you wanted to, but I'm giving it my best shot. I'm a glass-is-half-full kind of guy."

More than anything, entries centered around two core themes: women who wanted to reward their husbands with a lifelong dream of owning their own golf course, and children in their 30s who sought to give the course to their parents. A man in Illinois wrote simply that he wanted to own Greenwood "because I'd be a danged fool not to," a simplicity that Eakin found appealing.

"Some people have called and said that if things don't work out they'd like the property to build a hotel," Eakin said. "That's not what I'm after. Geez, you can't go to the movies and buy popcorn for what it takes to play golf here."

Eakin is grateful for all the radio and television stations that showed interest in reporting the details of his essay contest, but he realizes the failure to get the printed word out was the most glaring shortcoming. "People don't sit around watching TV with a pencil and paper," he reasons, "and now we know why the Lord wanted the Bible printed.

"The entry forms are still out," he added as the deadline neared. "But the people who have them don't know they still have time. And now I don't know how I can get the word out."

All Eakin wants to do is sell the property and get on with the rest of his life. And you can rest assured that does not entail sitting around watching daytime television.