Announcing Curracloe Links: Ireland’s next great golf course
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Announcing Curracloe Links: Ireland’s next great golf course

The world’s next great seaside links is coming to Ireland. Curracloe Links, located adjacent to the white sands of Curracloe Beach, is designed by the renowned team of Dana Fry and Jason Straka and developed by the Neville Hotel Group. Ground breaking for the new golf links takes place in February, with an expected opening in 2026. The golf course is in the same location as Neville Hotels’ newest property, Ravenport Resort.

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Union League National Golf Club

Union League National Golf Club

Ask any golfer what their idea of the perfect golf course would be. Most would say some combination of perhaps the two most iconic courses, and most regarded, in America: Pine Valley and Augusta National. If you can imagine that, then you are imagining Union League National Golf Club. The Union League of Philadelphia, which owns Union League National, was founded in 1862 to support President Abraham Lincoln and The Union in the United States’ Civil War.

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Golf Sustainability Episode 2 - Sustainable Golf Insights from Jason Straka
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Golf Sustainability Episode 2 - Sustainable Golf Insights from Jason Straka

In this episode of the Golf Sustainability Podcast, John Failla welcomes Jason Straka, principal of Fry Straka Global Golf Course Design, a leading global authority on sustainable golf course design. Jason shares his journey into the world of golf and how his passion for the environment led him to merge golf and environmental aspects of design.

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Staying the Course with Dana Fry
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Staying the Course with Dana Fry

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.”

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Fry/Straka studies classics for renovation at Valencia
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Fry/Straka studies classics for renovation at Valencia

The private course, located north of Los Angeles, was originally designed by Robert Trent Jones Sr and opened in 1965. The purpose of this year’s project, led by Jason Straka, was to restore Jones’s original design intent and classic features and enhance strategic options, while turf replacement, on all areas except greens, has reduced irrigation needs by 30 percent.

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Donald Ross uncovered: Jason Straka finds original Belleair CC layout in the Florida ground and in the history books
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Donald Ross uncovered: Jason Straka finds original Belleair CC layout in the Florida ground and in the history books

Architect Jason Straka in June was midway through a major face-lift of Belleair Country Club’s West Course, with a reopening slated for November. In order to save the original Donald Ross layout, which the private club says is the oldest continually operating course in Florida, Straka first was tasked with erasing decades’ worth of alterations that dampened the intent of the original design, often burying Ross’s sublime work beneath good intentions.

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Fry/Straka going big at Union League National

Fry/Straka going big at Union League National

Any discussion of Union League National begins with The Big Fill, a large-scale earthmoving effort — more than 1.6 million cubic yards in scope — that Fry/Straka created at the center of the 268-acre parcel. It rises to 78 feet above sea level, 56 feet above the original grade. However, its tendrils spread out hundreds of yards in half a dozen directions. The man-made ridgelines slowly but elegantly taper down, only to rise again and form new, smaller plateaus, from which other distinct ridge networks splinter off into the landscape.

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