WILTON — With the winter season firmly in the rearview mirror, Wilson Lake Country Club [WLCC] is clear of snow and gearing up for a season of sunshine and golfing.

WLCC has also enlisted the help of Wilton native Roger Adams, who is a seasoned professional golfer who recently moved back to Maine and has a long history in Franklin County.

Adams, along with his cousin, fellow Wilton native and WLCC co-worker Fred Shardlow, won the State championship for golfing for Mt. Blue High School in 1982. The two were also regional champions and won the Kennebec Valley Athletics Conference two years in a row.

“It’s interesting that Fred and I after like 40 years when we won in ’82 and now I’m just back here from California to start back working and helping run the course with Fred after all that time,” Adams said.

Adams returned to Wilton after working in insurance for 24 years in Carlsbad, California. From 1990 to 1997, he bounced around to various golf courses in Maine, Florida, California, and Washington, before leaving the golf world behind to pursue being an insurance representative.

Shardlow, on the other hand stayed in Maine and made a career out of keeping golf courses green and looking pristine. After completing the University of Massachusetts Winter School for Turf Managers at Amherst in the early nineties, Shardlow worked as an assistant at WLCC before moving on to work as a superintendent at Oakdale Country Club in Mexico for 18 years.

Shardlow came back to WLCC for six years before moving to Turner Highlands Golf Course. In 2019, however, WLCC was sold to Tom Cloutier, who sought to bring Shardlow back into the fold.

“Tom had a vision for this place,” Shardlow said.

Owner of Southwest Greens, Cloutier has a long history with golf, playing since he was seven years old. Cloutier reminisced about what WLCC was like in the past and stressed the quality of the course was his number one priority.

“That’s kind of been the reputation here for a long time,” Cloutier stated.  “Back in the early days, it was the greens. Always, people were talking about the greens here.

“That last owner that was here, he kind of got away from that and had some problems,” he continued. “They weren’t as good as they used to be, but then when I hired Fred in my first year, he knew what it was like and what it could be like. He’s done a great job bringing it back to where it was.”

Throughout all of this, Shardlow remained in contact with Adams. Adams sold his insurance agency in 2021 and got back into the world of golf. While working at a private club in California, Shardlow mentioned an opening at WLCC and suggested Adams try for the job.

“I thought about it for two seconds and said yes,” Adams said. “No, I said I’d sleep on it. But I already had made my mind up after he told me.

“Who would have thought, you know, being able to come all the way back home,” Adams added. “Not just to Maine, but to your actual hometown where you grew up, and the course that you played at and won a state championship. I mean, what are the odds of that happening?”

WLCC is open to the public and has been slowly growing its membership since Cloutier took over. They will be hosting an open house on Saturday, May 20, and they are located at 320 Weld Road in Wilton. First time members will also receive a 15-minute lesson from Adams himself. For more information about their rates for membership, please contact WLCC at [207] 645-2016 or visit their website at wilsonlakecountryclub.com.

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