KNOXVILLE — Leonard Mercer, 77, has no objection to children playing soccer on Knoxville Municipal Golf Course, as long as they clear the fairway when his group comes through.
Mercer’s group has held the 7:40 Tuesday tee time since 1974. After the Sports Authority put out renderings for a multi-field complex on the Schaad Road course, Mercer wrote the Authority asking that the foursome be recognized as existing tenants. The renderings label the seventh green “open space.” He circled it on his copy and wrote “occupied” next to it.
The letter asks that the tee time carry over to the new fields. The group will accept some changes to the mowing pattern. Earl Whitcomb, 79, would like something in writing about the bathroom.
“We’re slow getting up that hill now,” Mercer said. “But once we’re up there we move right along. If they put a goal out there I guess we go around it, same as the trees.”
Whitcomb has missed one Tuesday since 1974, the day of his brother’s funeral. The other three played without him and wrote his name on the card.
The Sports Authority wrote back thanking the men for their “longstanding engagement with the property” and enclosed a box of pencils with the Authority’s logo.
Mercer said he has used one already. “It’s a decent pencil. I was expecting the cheap kind where the eraser comes off the first time you use it.”