AUBURN — Adrien Fournier is still going strong.

For the past 20 years, the 88-year-old has been working for Fox Ridge Golf Club after being hired by former head pro Bob Darling.

“With Bobby, I did everything, except work in the pro shop,” Fournier said. “I used to take care of the tournaments and for this (head pro Jerry Diphilippo) I (am a starter) for tournaments.”

A couple of times a week he will help weekly tournaments get started by calling the next group to the first tee and he’s also the ranger to help keep the pace moving.

Fournier has been working in the golf industry for more than 50 years. He was the Wilson Lake Country Club chairman in Wilton from 1968-2000. The chairman of the course position oversaw the superintendent and grounds crew.

“My duties were to make sure we had greens that were good, (sand traps) that were raked,” Fournier said. “In other words, I was the boss, and let me tell you we had a good superintendent — just like they have (at Fox Ridge) — he did a hell of a job.”

Before joining Fox Ridge, he was the head pro at Paris Hill Country Club in 2000. He was originally supposed to be the assistant pro, but right before he was about to start, the head pro had a stroke and the club asked him to become the head pro.

Fournier’s career, whether at Wilson Lake, Paris Hill or Fox Ridge, included helping the Maine State Golf Association by being a course rater and a youth instructor. He started working with the MSGA in the 1990s.

A course rater measured a golf course’s course slope and rating. The course’s rating tells scratch golfers how difficult the course will be while the course slope will tell bogey-golfers how difficult the course is.

“We did the distances of each hole and decide if it was a par-4, par-5, or par-3,” Fournier said. “We rate on how hard the course plays. We had to play (the course) to give an idea of how hard the course is. Like Fox Ridge, for an instance, it has a higher rating because it’s a hard course to play.”

Fox Ridge has a course rating of 72 while the course slope is 132.

Course raters will also ask players their opinions and courses are rated every three or four years.

While being a youth instructor, teaching kids 15-and-under with various golf pros, Fournier believed he shaped young kids.

“We had a junior program for the kids to show them how to play golf, the ethics of golf and how you act out on the golf course,” Fournier said. “For me, the 10 years I worked with the MSGA (as a youth instructor), I took one player off the course because he was getting too wise with everybody. He nearly hit a kid by throwing a club, so I (took) him off the course.

“I did him a favor because the following year, I had a meeting with (my) boss, (the kid’s) father and another (MSGA) board member and I told the kid: ‘I want you to play all year and the first time you step out of line, you will be all done because you are setting a bad example for other kids.’ It worked out perfect, the kid played all year, never got in trouble.”

Fournier bumped into that same kid a few years ago and he thanked Fournier for the learning experience.

PICKING UP GOLF AND HIS FIRST STUDENT

Fournier didn’t really take up golf until he was 35 and his athleticism — he was a four-sport standout at Jay High School — helped him quickly pick up the sport.

His nephew had just picked up the sport and asked his uncle if he wanted to go to Tabers in Auburn to hit some golf balls.

“We started hitting balls and (my nephew) looked at me and said, ‘I thought you said you never played golf?’” Fournier said. “I never played golf, but when I was in the Army I would go by the driving range and hit a bucket of balls.”

Soon after he joined Wilson Lake and at the height of his playing career, he was a 4-handicap player. He also had six holes-in-one in his career, with four coming at Wilson Lake and two at Fox Ridge.

He also got his older brother Laurier Francis “Larry” Fournier to start playing. Larry had polio in both legs and in the right arm and died in April 2013, but that never stopped him from any activity.

“My brother did everything that I did,” Fournier said. “If I went skiing, we would go down the hill together. We would go on the ice to play hockey, he would be the goalie, and swimming, he could swim like a fish.”

Just like Adrien, Larry picked up golf very quickly.

“I was his teacher. I said, ‘You can play golf,’” Fournier said. “He said, ‘Are you crazy?’ I said, ‘Larry you play every other sport with me, you can play golf.’ I took him to the driving range and do what I do. I took my first swing and I used it as a crutch. I hit one ball. He said, ‘I can do that.’”

Larry didn’t really need much help after learning how to swing a golf club and got down to an 8-handicap at Norway Country Club, where he was a member.

Adrien calls his brother an inspiration.

HALL OF FAME-WORTHY CAREERS

Adrien Fournier is already in the Maine Baseball Hall of Fame for both his time at Jay High School, where he hit .789 his junior season in 1950, and for his career in town baseball in the 1950s and 1960s — he helped Turner Townies (1957) and Chi-Liv Townies (1960) to appearances in the National Amateur Baseball World Series in Battle Creek, Michigan.

Adrian was a lifetime .400 hitter between high school and town baseball.

He also umpired for 28 years and retired in 2004.

Now a friend, Chris Houlares, is trying to get both Adrien and Larry into the Maine Golf Hall of Fame.

Houlares believes the work Adrien has done in golf should get him into consideration.

“(I feel Adrien deserves consideration) because I feel what he has done to dedicate himself and donate all that time, the fact he got himself down to a 4-handicap, he was a dedicated man,” Houlares said. “He gives a lot of time to (Fox Ridge).”

Larry played in many amateur tournaments with some top-five finishes in the state and was the First Flight champion at Norway Country Club in 1980.

He also played with eight-time major champion Tom Watson at Augusta Country Club and Watson helped Larry get a sponsorship with Ping — a golf club manufacturer — and was also sponsored by Daiwa, another golf company.

Larry also played in the 1988 Arizona Golf Classic. He was a member of the National Easter Seals Sports Council — Jack Nicklaus is also a member — and played in the first Sheraton Washington Easter Seals golf tournament.

Finally, he wrote a book called “I Did It! So Can You” in 1988.

“I told (the Maine Golf Hall of Fame) in my email, posthumously this guy should be in the hall of fame, he should be nominated and brought into the hall of fame, just for his accomplishments alone,” Houlares said. “How many people do you know that has done what that guy did?”

Houlares said Larry and Adrien’s candidacy will be put on the Maine Golf Hall of Fame’s ledger for 2022.

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