College Athlete Makes It His Business To Putter Around

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. - A college football player paid the ultimate in lab fees for an independent study course. He took out a $200,000 loan to build a miniature golf course 60 miles from campus.

"I've had other independent study projects that were really good work, but this is the first one I've had where a guy wanted to go out and start a business," said William Sauer, a Susquehanna University business professor.

John Heim, a defensive tackle on the Susquehanna football team, didn't pay his lab fees to the school. They went to contractors who helped him transform the end of a parking lot into a multi-level golf course.

"It was pretty scary signing my name to a loan the size I did," said Heim, a 23-year-old sophomore.

Heim's outdoor classroom slowly filled with 1,000-pound boulders, a 20-foot-high fountain, 80,000 gallons of water and rhododendrons "just like they have at the Masters."

The par-44 course doesn't include windmills or railroad crossing gates.

"Kids like that stuff, but here you have more college kids and high-school kids looking for recreation," said Heim, whose course is just two miles from Penn State's Beaver Stadium. "Kids will still play it, but I wanted to build a challenging course."

The course is challenging enough to attract a steady stream of customers from area country clubs, who come to relax after a day on longer links. The course also lives up to its name: Pebble Creek - taken from the oceanfront Pebble Beach course near Monterey, Calif.

There's real sand in the sand traps. Hole No. 3 leaps 2 feet of water, then drops over a ledge. Humps on No. 15 send balls toward a rapid stream and No. 17 requires golfers to use the water to propel their balls.

"People wait in line 30 minutes to play. It's crazy," said Bruce Heim, John's father.

Since the course opened June 12, only one person has shot under par. It wasn't John Heim, but his brother, Ben, a senior linebacker at Yale.

"He comes out and plays every day. The best I've shot is a 50," John Heim said.

Heim's father, who co-signed on the loan, is a State College real estate developer who couldn't find anyone to improve a triangle of land at the end of a parking lot. John took up the challenge, looking for a way to return to the same academic sequence as his classmates.

"If you graduate in December at a school as small as mine, you're maybe one of 10," said Heim, who started school in January 1990 after serving in the Army.