Diamond Back Golf Course auction set Feb. 25

Staff report

CANFIELD

The owner of the Diamond Back Golf Course on Leffingwell Road hopes the weather on Feb. 25 will be as unseasonably warm as this weekend’s forecast.

“The warmer the better,” George Playforth said Thursday of the date for the auction to sell his course. “We certainly wouldn’t want a day like today.

“In February, you never know what you’re going to get.”

After 22 years of owning and maintaining Diamond Back, Playforth, who is quick with quips when questioned, says it’s time to retire.

“I’m 80 years old and I [need] my cane,” the Ellsworth resident said. “That’s why I am selling.”

In promoting the auction, Kiko Auction says “all sells to the highest bidder on location.”

The 132-acre course has a clubhouse, a banquet facility, kitchen and pro shop as well as maintenance and storage buildings.

Also to be sold are golf carts, restaurant equipment, power equipment, mowers and tables.

“It’s all selling,” said Playforth, who added that he will miss the activity.

“I enjoy outside work,” Playforth said. “Mowing and what-have-you, it was a good job. I enjoyed the whole thing about [maintaining the course], I really did.

“Got to know a lot of people.”

The auction will begin with the sale of the property.

When Playforth sold Diamond Auto Wrecking outside of Salem to a son-in-law, purchased Diamond Back, which then had nine holes.

“I kind of bought [the course] as a hobby and it ended up a hell of a full-time job,” Playforth said with a laugh. “An expensive hobby. “I’ve got a lot of sweat and blood in here. I put the other [nine] holes in, [added] the buildings.”

(Full disclosure: Playforth’s father-in-law, the late Jack Edwards, was a long-time reporter and editor for The Vindicator.)

Playforth’s wife, Diane, still golfs.

“I quit two years ago,” said Playforth, adding that his golf game is “not worth [much] anymore.”