Under the cover of the deck at Fox Ridge Golf Club, Tom Kimball looked out over the pond between the ninth and 18th greens. A hazy fog drifted across the water, masking the serene surface.

He reached for the only logical tool for the job – a fishing pole.

“I haven’t caught anything yet,” said Kimball, affectionately known by many in Maine’s golfing community as “T-K.”

“I’m going to keep trying though,” he said. “There’s some good ones in there.”

He walked off into the early-morning and disappeared.

Two years later, with the Maine Open in its third year at the Auburn course, Kimball again patrolled those same shores, this time, a ball-retriever in hand.

“What happened to fishing?”

“My pole broke,” Kimball said. “But you should see how many balls are out here.”

He filled buckets.

Kimball died this weekend of an apparent heart attack at his home in Gray. A beloved member of the Maine State Golf Association, Kimball ran the organization’s junior golf program, beginning in that position in 2000.

“It’s the most successful junior program run by an amateur organization in the country,” MSGA Executive Director Nancy Storey said Tuesday. “That’s all thanks to him. he did more on his own, with just a couple of interns a year, than most organizations do with 10 people.”

Storey isn’t kidding.

Kimball grew the junior golf program, making modifications to a program that originally had offered a mere six tournaments a summer for less than 100 junior golfers. Under his guidance, the program grew to as many as 17 events, and more than 300 participants.

“The focus on the MSGA Junior Golf Tour under Kimball’s watch was not winning, but participating in a respectful manner,” Storey said. “He focused on the values that the game of golf teaches our young, and never lost an opportunity to help his young golfers learn.”

Bryan Peaco graduated from Edward Little High School in 1997. Kimball coached at the Auburn school in the 1990s, where he also taught for 25 years.

Peaco admits to this day he was less than perfect as a student-athlete.

“I was a bit of a head case,” Peaco said sheepishly. “But that was the thing with TK. It was more about respect for yourself and for the game than it was about playing the game well. He could care less if you were good, as long as you played the game the right way.”

Peaco said that was the case for all junior golfers under Kimball’s watch.

Nothing changed, even as the years did.

Kimball retired from teaching a few years after retiring from coaching at Edward Little, and took his love of the game to the MSGA: He simply moved his classroom outside.

With Kimball at the helm, Maine won its first ever New England Junior Golf Championship in 2001, led by the play of Jesse Spiers and Shawn Warren.

For the past two years, virtually every all-state high school golf player has been a participant in the MSGA Junior golf program.

Last year, the junior program reached new heights. The reigning junior girls’ and boys’ champions, Alexa Rancourt and Ryan Gay, won the state amateur titles for their respective genders, and also defended their junior crowns in the same season.

It was the first time it had ever happened.

In the country.

And it was in large part thanks to Kimball’s efforts.

Kimball loved to tell stories. He had plenty of them to tell, from his younger days, of course. Times when he fell asleep in sand traps (in Great Britain), times when he’d hang out with famous golfers.

“If there’s anything that sticks out in my mind that I remember the most, it’s all of the stories he’d have,” Peaco said. “They were the stories only a true golf nomad would have.”

Kimball was a golf nomad, but he had a calling card.

He’d draw beagles, sort of his calling card, on pieces of paper – and on golf carts – and people would always know he’d been there.

Under the cover of darkness this past weekend, Tom Kimball made the journey to a much bigger golf course, with a much bigger pond bridging the ninth and 18th holes.

The fishing poles where he’s at now are likely of better quality than those he used at Fox Ridge, and there is no end to the supply of golf balls he’ll find in those waters.

With him, he’ll bring the memories and affection of the many, many lives he touched, as he walks slowly away through the fog.

The tears people will shed, both in sadness and in joy over their memories of T-K, will be plentiful.

They’ll fill buckets.

Justin Pelletier is an assistant editor/online. His e-mail is [email protected]