BIGLERVILLE, Pa. (AP) Almost four decades ago, Walt Hays dug up a once thriving apple orchard and started to work on fulfilling his dream: creating an 18-hole golf course.

Hays spent every spare hour working on the course over the next 35 years until the last hole was complete. Now 86, he keeps tinkering with Piney Apple Golf Course, the only 18-hole course near the tiny Adams County borough that has a population of 1,101.

"Dad never wanted it to take 35 years," said Peg Buchs, the oldest of Hays' two daughters from his second marriage. "That's just the way it was."

On a fall weekend in 1999, Piney Apple opened all 18 holes. The course gained even more exposure in August 2000, when a crew from NBC's "Today Show" visited to film a four-minute segment.

As a child in Rancocas, N.J., Hays actually preferred tennis to golf. Wanting to become a farmer, he and his pregnant wife arrived in the summer of 1939 near the spot that would someday become the first hole of his dream course.

But the dream only arrived after Hays injured his legs and had two vertebrae crushed in a freak farming accident. Also, the orchard was having tough times and Hays' drainage business had just had federal subsidies cut.

So, laying in a Carlisle hospital bed, Hays designed an 18-hole golf course in his head. And in 1964, without blueprints and working random farm jobs during the day, he and his children started clearing the land to build it.

"We couldn't borrow any money because we didn't have anything," Buchs said. "So Dad put us to work. We would walk around picking up rocks all day.

The course slowly took shape, starting with the two eighth greens a few hundred feet from the family house.

"I didn't know if I could make it with the money we had," Hays said. "So I built two eighth fairways and two eighth greens. If we needed more money, I was going to sell one of them. But it worked out, so we made one of the fairways the practice range."

In 1979, the Hays family finally opened the first nine holes of Piney Apple. Although they called it a golf course, Buchs says most visitors sarcastically considered it a cow pasture. Hays, though, was intent on completing the project.

"Golf courses are supposed to be 18 holes," he said. "Sure, there were times when I got worried, especially when we were finishing it up. But I always saw the course as a unit, and that's how it was going to be built."

It took him 15 years to build the first nine holes and 15 more to build the next five, hampered by back and heart surgeries and his children leaving to start their own careers.

After he retired, Hays took a four-day vacation to Florida to recruit golf pro Royce Hewitt. He spent much of his 70s operating a bulldozer, carving out two final fairways and digging more water hazards and sand traps on the existing holes.

His pet project also developed a reputation in the conservative town, sending people whispering and getting his children teased in school.

"People weren't too receptive," he said. "You know, somebody up there's got a crazy idea. And if I was in their shoes, I'd probably think the same thing."

From behind the 18th green, the entire course is visible, framed by distant hills and dotted with the pine and apple trees that give the course its name.

Near the 16th fairway, a rusted truck sits as a reminder of the arduous construction. The area also includes a design gaffe, as the 13th, 14th and 15th holes crisscross in a corner of land where Hays simply ran out of room.

Hewitt, who has also designed courses in Pennsylvania and Florida, calls the intersection "Malfunction Junction."

"There are lots of things I would have done differently," Hewitt said. "But to his credit, he's done all the work up there. He's still building sand traps, and he really doesn't seem to need that much help."

Hays still starts each day with a ride in his 1984 Volkswagen Rabbit to Possum Hollow for breakfast, then strolls through the 40-foot trailer that serves as a pro shop. For most of the day, he drives the bulldozer, helps his son Doug spray the greens or makes other random repairs.

"Is it good?" he asks. "It's pretty damn good. But I always see some way to make it better. Some little thing. It'll only be perfect if I live long enough to make everything right."

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