Did you see Paul’s Feature in GCM?

A legend grows in Maine – Paul Richmond’s unique background and hospitality generate a colorful atmosphere for crews at two Maine golf courses.

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When Paul Richmond entered the maintenance shop, others knew it right away. The harmonica gave it away.

“We’d hear it when we came into the shop,” says Charlie Fultz, a former Richmond colleague. “Biggest Bob Dylan fan on the planet.” Dylan is an American singer/songwriter and cultural legend whose harmonica indicated a sound that identified his music in the 1960s.

“Yes, I always had Bob Dylan playing in the shop,” says Richmond, “and I would try to play harmonica.”

Richmond, meanwhile, found his own way to strike the right chord in Maine’s golf industry — featuring as host to the Maine GCSA’s Annual Crew Day.

The five-year GCSAA member is a superintendent who presides over two courses in the state: The Meadows Golf Club in Litchfield and Fogg Brook Resort in Palmyra. This journey into the world of golf didn’t start in this fashion. A native of Osceola, Ark., Richmond was raised on a farm along the Mississippi River. His great-grandmother was a babysitter for another music legend, Johnny Cash, who was born and raised in an Arkansas town 25 minutes from where Richmond grew up.

Richmond departed Arkansas after high school. He followed his father to Washington, D.C. Paul Sr. is legally blind and was hired as a computer programmer with the Internal Revenue Service. His son? He landed in the golf industry. That’s not all. He developed his own reputation at a bar, where he was a bartender before golf entered the picture. “It was a bloody mary bar. I got really good at that,” Richmond says.

His role at the bar served as a night job. During the day, Richmond went to work for the maintenance crew at Country Club of Culpeper in Culpeper, Va. Quickly, he gained a knack for that line of work. “I brought him on as a mechanic,” says Fultz, a GCSAA Class A superintendent and 19-year association member now at Heritage Oaks Golf Course in Harrisonburg, Va. “He took an interest in golf course maintenance really early, wanting to know the hows and whys of it. He was really great with the equipment as a mechanic but became intrigued with what we did on the course. He also started playing a lot of golf and got pretty good pretty quick.”

Days and nights were lengthy. “I’d wake up, go to the golf course and mow greens. Then I’d go home at 3, shower and put on a tuxedo to go bartend,” Richmond says.

He moved to Maine and took a job in golf, starting at Kennebec Country Club in 2000 as an assistant and mechanic. In 2006, Richmond was hired as superintendent at nine-hole Wawenock Golf Club in Walpole and a year later added the general manager position. Eighteen years ago, he became the club’s general manager while remaining as superintendent. His engagement in the industry increased, too. Richmond took pesticide classes and gained a 3b commercial master application license. He secured a GHIN (Golf Handicap and Information Network) through the United States Golf Association. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Richmond served as Maine GCSA president.