It is hard to imagine a more fun change of career than buying an old overgrown, defunct, golf course and restoring it from scratch. But that’s exactly what this group of guys in Chesterville, Maine have done.
They have started to amass a large following on ‘The Fairway Fields‘ Instagram and TikTok through early videos showing their restoration project getting off the ground.
The @FairwayFields accounts have existed for less than a month wiht the first TikTok video appearing on June 20th and the first Instagram video being posted on June 19th. But the algorithms have been working overtime and these videos quickly found their intended audience.
Bros Buy ‘Fairway Fields’ Golf Course To Restore It
In one such video, they show the barely discernible former greens being mowed down in the first of many steps in returning them to their former glory. This videos hows the equipment in the shed that came with the course.
In the clip, Tye says they bought the “abandoned golf course” about a month ago. Then outlines the plan to restore it to glory. That starts with fixing up these tools:
@thefairwayfields Fairway Fields is getting a new green 🫡
On the surface, this might seem like a fairly straightforward project. Where the crew goes out, axes a landscaping team and whips the course back into shape. But this ‘abandoned golf course’ is wildly overgrown.
In the most recent video posted to the Fairway Fields TikTok account, they show the process of restoring the 1st hole on the course to its former glory.
@thefairwayfields Hole 1 🤝 day 1 – Fairway Fields
To the untrained eye that was simply an overgrown field. And this is Maine! There are ticks everywhere. This is Tick Central USA. I cannot fathom clearing an area like that and how many ticks would be turned up from the brush.
Everyone is rooting for them
Their videos are all picking up hundreds of thousands of views.
Golfing in Maine
The Fairway Fields course purchased by Tye and others is in Chesterville, Maine to the northwest of Augusta and about 90 minutes on the road from Portland.
I have been in Southern Maine for the past week and a half and have to say, driving around these country roads to the west of Portland it will often go from dense northeast forest to farmland in an instant. And so much of the farmland looks ripe for a golf course.
I was fortunate to go to the Falmouth Country Club last weekend as a guest and the golf layout in this part of the country is stunning. Unfortunately, due to the frigid Winters up here there is a short window where golf courses are open and playable unlike down in Florida where I live.
According to MaineGolf.org, most of the public golf courses around Maine open in mid-April and close in October. That is a solid 6-month window to play but in this instance they have to get the course into working shape before they can even open it up.
Maine can use any renovated golf courses it can get though. This is such a beautiful state there is no sense in clearing forest for new courses when older ones exist.
According to Golflink there are 134 golf courses throughout Maine. That includes 114 public golf courses, 12 private, and 8 municipal.
Once the course is back to its former self they will then need to contend with maintenance. There are also the perils of running a seasonal business in Maine.
Everything about this screams ‘passion project’ and that’s precisely what I love about it the most.