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The house is almost as old as Kansas. Its builder, a stonemason who emigrated from England in 1855, bought the land from a family of Shawnee Indians named Whitedeer.

On a recent sunny summer morning, B.J. Klein approaches the empty house and presses his face against a window. He sees dust and darkness. "It's a shame to see how this is all deteriorated," he says. "It's a crime."

Klein lives in a 1960s ranch house across the street. Retired for several years, he used to work for the man who owned the old house, a custom-golf-club maker named Kenneth Smith.

Smith bought the house and 20 surrounding acres in 1933. Using stone quarried from the site, he built a factory next to the residence and moved his club-making operation from midtown Kansas City. Set amid trees and ponds, the building looked more like a fireplace-warmed clubhouse than a manufacturing facility. Even today, vacant and surrounded by untamed taxus and red barberry plants, the shop looks inviting.

Smith built a thriving company in what was then sparsely populated countryside. His clubs appealed to the rich and famous. Dwight Eisenhower, Bing Crosby and Mickey Mantle all used sets of hand-manufactured Kenneth Smith clubs.

The business took Smith to exotic places. In 1971, he attended a party for the king of Morocco that was interrupted by a failed coup attempt.

"We thought the shooting was firecrackers at first," Smith told The Kansas City Star afterward. "Then some people fell, and we realized it wasn't fun."

While moving in rare company, Smith looked after his employees. He gave out car loans and Christmas bonuses. When employees had babies, his wife, Eva, presented the newborns with engraved silver spoons. The Smiths were themselves childless. "He always called us his family," says Klein, who worked 44 years for the company.

Smith died in 1977.

In the years before his death, Smith amassed 180 acres along 71st Street. He dreamed of building a championship golf course. He had even placed a restriction on the land, forbidding the construction of anything but fairways and greens.

The course was never completed, and now a builder wants to put up luxury homes on the portion of the estate that remains undeveloped. The plan puts new homes where the residence and factory now stand.

Preservationists and Smith's former employees say the land should be protected, that it deserves a spot on the National Register of Historic Places.

As any map will attest, the pro-development argument usually wins in Johnson County. But those who want to see Smith's ground preserved also face an unlikely opponent: Thomas Jones, the man to whom Smith's widow entrusted her estate.

Critics say his decisions dishonor the legacy of Smith, one of Kansas City's most innovative businessmen.

On a hot Thursday afternoon, the Adams Golf equipment trailer is parked near the swimming pool at the Nicklaus Golf Club at LionsGate in Overland Park. The 2006 Greater Kansas City Golf Classic, a tournament for professional golfers ages 50 and older, begins the following day.

Inside the trailer, Max Puglielli uses a viselike contraption to adjust the loft on a set of irons when tour player Larry Ziegler pokes in his head.

"Ziggy, how's that new hybrid, good?" Puglielli asks. (A hybrid club features properties of both an iron and a metal wood.)

"I don't hit it good, I'll be honest with you."

"What are you doing with it?"

"Hitting it dead-right."

"Let me have it," Puglielli says. "I'll take the right out real quick."

Puglielli spends 47 weeks a year on the road, mending and tweaking clubs for touring pros sponsored by Adams, one of the game's major manufacturers. Golf equipment is estimated to be a $5.8 billion business, and companies spend considerable energy putting clubs in the hands of the pros who play on television.

Club design has come a long way since Smith sold mashies and niblicks. During World War II, the persimmon that Smith used to make drivers and 3-woods was scarce. Today, the clubs are still called woods, but they're made from titanium and they're performance-tested like jet fighters.

But Smith's work endures. The swing-weight scale, a device he invented to measure a club's balance, is still used today. Cleveland Golf equipment specialist John Moriarty, who also works with tour pros, keeps a Kenneth Smith-brand swing-weight scale on his workbench. "I guarantee you'll find one of these in every single trailer," Moriarty says.

Smith is also remembered for the high quality of his clubs. Jerry Garrison, Puglielli's assistant, was stationed in South Korea while serving in the Air Force in the early '70s. Garrison says that many of the generals in the Korean and Japanese armies owned Kenneth Smith clubs, which were seen as status symbols.

"Everything was high-quality," Garrison says. "The best leather, the best stainless steel, good shafts, everything."

Ultimately, though, craftsmanship lost the race against engineering.

"Nowadays, no human being can build a good wood by hand," Puglielli says. "It's got to be totally calculated: mass properties, different weights of metals that you use."