Staying the Course with Dana Fry
Below are excerpts from an article that originally appeared in Naples Illustrated.
“I haven’t worked a day in my life,” Dana Fry tells me with unabashed enthusiasm.
Who is Dana Fry you ask? A quick google search conjures entries that read like the curriculum vitae of a very accomplished man. We meet for lunch on the clubhouse patio at Naples National Golf Club on a picture-perfect day. After talking for two and a half hours, I conclude that the first entry that answers my query proves to be a fitting description of the affable gentleman: “Fry is one of the most creative and successful golf course architects in the world.”
In August 1983, Andy Banfield, a lead designer for Tom Fazio, recognized Fry from a newspaper photo one night in a Tucson bar. The two engaged in conversation. (Fry admits he did not know who Tom Fazio was.) After introductions and discussions, Fry, who was about to start his senior year of college, decided to take a semester off and accepted a job.
In the following months, Fry spent days flagging cacti for transplanting and assisting Banfield in the construction of the Ventana Canyon Golf & Racquet Club in Tucson. Fry remembers the grunt work: “I was taught all facets of the business—I even painted bunkers.” Eventually, Fry came clean with his parents about his decision to quit school and pursue a career in golf course design. They were “very upset,” he recalls. “I never graduated from college, but boy did I get a great education.”
Fry seemed to be in the right place to meet the right people at the right time to gain experience in the world of golf course architecture.
His second job with Fazio was in South Carolina at Callawassie Island off Hilton Head, where Fry had the fortune of living next door to and working alongside Mike Strantz, the late golf course architect who worked with Tom Fazio from 1979 to 1987. Strantz was part of Fazio’s construction crew on Moss Creek in Hilton Head. From Strantz, Fry learned to drive a bulldozer, create shapes, and earthscape. “I learned to see what Mike saw,” Fry explains. “From Andy, I learned how to think big.”
In 1997, Michael Hurdzan and Dana Fry entered an official partnership, calling their newly formed company Hurdzan/Fry Environmental Golf Design. Hurdzan, who holds three master’s degrees and a PhD in environmental plant physiology, became the technical expert. Fry contributed his ambition, growing business acumen, and imagination.
When I speak with Hurdzan about his former partner, he tells me “Dana is a rare and unique person.” He shares that Fry is more committed to golf than anyone he’s met in 75 years around the game. “Only his family and health are more highly valued,” Hurdzan says. “For Fry, every new golf course design is more of a masterpiece than the one he previously completed. Every project explores new territory, and Fry gives each one so much personal attention that is always spectacular, fresh, and often trend-setting.”
Click here to read the full article on naplesillustrated.com.