POLAND – When Dave Bartasuis was a little boy, he’d get tired in the middle of the day. Most 6-year-olds are accustomed to a nap in the middle afternoon hours anyway, so the fact that he took them on a regular basis was no surprise to anyone.

Where he took those naps, however, was a bit more curious.

“The members would come back to the clubhouse,” said Dave’s father, Frank, the owner of Fairlawn Golf Club. “I’d ask them if they had seen Dave, and they would just laugh and say Yes, we saw him taking a nap on the fourth hole.'”

Once done his afternoon nap, Dave would pick his clubs up and keep playing as long as he could.

“He was a natural, there was no doubt,” Frank said. “He won big tournaments from the time he was a boy, even the New England Midget tournament in Massachusetts.”

Now 85, Frank is still the owner at Fairlawn, and the napping child, Dave, helps run the business alongside his father.

“The father-son relationship goes right up through everything,” Dave said. “He went to Bentley and graduated in 1958. I went there and graduated in 1980. He became a PGA pro in 1958 and I got my certification in 1991.”

They are the only known father-son PGA professionals in Maine, and at 85, Frank is the oldest and longest-running owner of a golf course in the state, 41 years and counting.

A changing view

The deck on the second floor of the clubhouse at Fairlawn Golf Course overlooks the 18th green and the first tee.

“Forty years ago you could be sitting here and see the whole course in front of you,” said Frank. “So many things have changed, now.”

While there are more trees at Fairlawn now than there were 40 years ago, more people playing and more and better equipment with which to work, one thing that has not changed at Fairlawn since it opened in 1963 is Frank.

“We started from scratch,” said Frank. “There were two potato farms here, and put together it was about 500 acres. At the time, I was running Summit Golf Course and my lease there ran out, so I came here and decided to go it on my own.”

From scratch

When he purchased the land in 1961, there was nothing there – literally.

“I started pacing the land, trying to map out where holes ought to go,” said Frank, who then pointed to the corner of the course near the bend in the ninth fairway. “I had it dead-set in my mind that it needed to start there, in the corner, but no matter how I moved and which way I turned, I couldn’t get anything more than a 290-yard hole, which for any hole is an odd distance.”

Once he had decided on the current opening hole, things started to fall into place. Using a method for creating greens not often used to that point in the northeast, Frank started building the course in 1962. By 1963, the first nine opened, and one year later the back nine saw its first foot traffic.

The clubhouse, meanwhile, was imported from Summit – in two pieces.

“It was a sight,” Frank said. “We had it loaded up and it traveled here from Summit in two pieces on trucks down the Plains Road, which was an all-dirt road back then. They had to close off the road to traffic in both directions to get it here.”

That clubhouse is still in place today with the pro shop and lockers added to it.

Evolution of a game, of a course

The trees that line some of the holes now were planted long after Frank purchased the property and transformed it from fertile farming ground to bright green rolling fairways, but they are some of the more noticeable changes in the course since 1963.

“We’ve added rock walls and a lot of floral arrangements,” Frank said.

“People from out of state come in and are always asking what we’ve done to change things this time,” Dave added. “We try and make it a unique experience for people every time they come out.”

The game itself has changed as well, which has shifted the course from being a long course to a mid-size, just by virtue of aging.

“This used to be one of the longest courses in the state,” Frank said. “Now, with the equipment that players can use, and with the technology people have to build with, things are getting longer and longer.”

One thing technology has given Fairlawn is the ability to be up-to-date on all of the newest techniques in grounds care, something Frank and Dave both take very seriously.

To the future

At 85, Frank is not quite done being in charge. Every day, he roams the course, making sure everything is in running order. While he is busy with the general upkeep and dealing with the maintenance crew, Dave runs a lot of the day-to-day business in the pro shop.

“I have people around me, and so does he,” Dave said. “It works outward from us.”

And while certain grass has evolved, and the length of the fairways have increased at courses all around the country, there is still something special at Fairlawn, and it starts from the top.

It may be a coincidence that in the same year that Dave was born, his father became the first Maine golf professional to graduate from the PGA school in Dunedin, Florida, but it certainly would explain a lot.

“As far as I am concerned, this is his, he built this up,” Dave said. “And things will continue on this way out here as long as I am alive to see it happen.”