Playing Wil-Mar: Getting the Bet Right (2024)

Playing Wil-Mar: Getting the Bet Right represents one man's love of golf, wagering, and a vision for turning his family's tobacco farm near Raleigh, North Carolina, into a community golf course at the start of golf's popularity in the 1960s. Through one modern-day round of golf between long-time friends, we experience how the love of golf, enduring friendships, getting the bet right, storytelling, and laughter commemorate 240 golf seasons and 22,000 sunrises and sunsets that stretched into a 60-year legacy of Wil-Mar Golf Club. Playing Wil-Mar: Getting the Bet Right is a movie-length documentary shared as Fran Wilkerson and her long-time friend, Brett Stell, play a round of golf, regaling stories, shared experiences, and laughing over how Fran's daddy, Bill Allen, and Brett's dad, Red Stell, bet on everything at the golf course. It also shows how Fran, her brother Marty Allen, and his wife Ann picked up where their father Bill Allen left off, adding onto the original 9-hole golf course and continuing to get the bet right as their dedication and commitment to operating a public golf course traversed through family and friendships, joys, heartache, and events beyond their control in weather, economic ups and downs, and community growth. The legacy continued when Fran and Marty brought in their children to run the family golf business. Their hard work and love created enduring memories for Raleigh golfers who enjoyed playing at Wil-Mar Golf Club for 60 years.