OUR PHILOSOPHY is to design golf courses that stir the spirit, exceed expectation and defy understanding. In doing this, golf becomes a complex puzzle requiring strength, skill and strategy--set in an environment of unquestioning beauty, yet subject to the irrepressible forces of nature. Our courses are often gentle reminders of 20th century designs and range from municipal courses with a high-energy capability and profitability, to exclusive country clubs with a more relaxed spirit and tradition of golf's golden age.  In designing all golf courses, we want to create beautiful settings and unforgettable images. We want people to play our courses and discover pleasure, whether it is a closeness to nature, a certain serenity or an exhilarating challenge. We believe each golf hole should have a distinctive and strong personality, so that it becomes an unforgettable friend, whom you cherish revisiting.

 Addressing our Client's Expectations

OUR GOAL is to produce golf courses that fulfill our client's expectations. In doing this, we create courses which are aesthetic, profitable and which operate efficiently. Our approach is to form a team with our client and to understand his objectives, to study the land and to arrive at the best compromise of expectations and natural limitations. The result is a blend of the reality of the site and our clients' dreams. We encourage the use of multiple tees, wide landing zones, offset angles of play and forgiveness or containment for errant shots of the less skilled, but a demanding array of risk and reward shot values for competitive golfers. We design greens which are sensitive to the approach shots of all golfers, which drain well and make skillful putting a reasonable part of the game. We prefer to use the fewest hazards to establish the strategy of the hole and give it its own character.

Preserving the Environment, Enhancing the Course

A TRULY great golf course stands the test of time. To be timeless, a course has to be in harmony with the environment and needs of society. By understanding and respecting nature and the constant natural evolutionary processes at work in any environment, we strive to design a golf course that works with those forces and doesn't compete with them. We strive to save or enhance natural habitats or create new environmentally-sound ones. The more we harmonize natural surroundings into a golf course the more aesthetic and memorable the courses will be for golfers who enjoy seeing wildlife and nature. We realize legal and moral obligations to protect certain environments and we encourage cooperation with environmental groups. (In fact, we have constructed North America's first environmental demonstration project golf course, on Boston's South Shore.) Appropriately called Widow's Walk, after the rooftop structure found on colonial sea captain's houses, the course offers views from the sand hills of Cape Cod Bay, the North River, and the lovely town of Scituate. The public course is the product of cooperative planning between environmentalist and golf interests, to convert an abandoned sand quarry into public recreation, while improving the wildlife capacity and bio-diversity of the site. Besides providing some of the most exciting public golf available, the course also yields valuable scientific information on the impacts of golf on the environment. A research coordinator is working with several universities, corporations and environmental groups to establish procedures for gathering and analyzing data from all of the research facilities built into the golf course. The project has already produced one master's thesis from Cornell University.

Realizing Excellence

At HURDZAN/FRY Golf Course Design we strive to make each golf course as perfect as time and the site conditions will allow.  To realize the highest level of excellence possible within our design skills and imagination, we have found that it is essential to give personal attention to every detail of both the planning and construction phases of golf course development.  Although other firms profess these ideals, our record of performance at resort courses like Desert Willow and Sand Barrens near Atlantic City; environmental demonstration projects like Widow’s Walk in Scituate, Massachusetts; and the spectacular Devil’s Pulpit north of Toronto, shows that we live them well. 

It is our feeling that the best golf course architecture, not only fulfills the challenging and strategic expectations of the individual golfer, but also blends in with the natural assets of the land so as to create a memorable experience.  It has always been our approach to respect environmental and ecological parameters and to design in harmony with them.

 There is no question that some golf courses are more special than others, and for over a century golf course designers have searched for an explanation.  But that “special” quality defies description for it isn’t some mathematical relationship that can be reasoned, but rather it is an ethereal, spiritual quality that must be felt, experienced and internalized.  It doesn’t have to do with how well you play golf, or how often, or on what venues.  Instead it comes from observing and understanding laws and balances that govern nature and subconsciously communicate to us. 

 Our practice is to spend days on a site until we know its personality.  We evaluate its strengths and weaknesses, temper, charm, limits and assets.  This allows us to develop the site’s golfing potential to the maximum, while minimizing its limitations and long term maintenance problems; to create a golf course that is safe, fun to play, easy to care for, and can be built and sold for a reasonable price.  This is what most owners and users of golf courses want, and we enjoy a reputation for providing that.  Not only does our attention to detail result in a better golf course, it also yields lower construction costs, as contractors see security in bidding our work, and meeting our expectations.  We consistently build courses for well under the national cost average because of our design methods.  We commonly have over sixty (60) pages of specifications for an 18-hole course.  This allows us to be artistically expressive in our design, and gives the contractor a more accurate estimate of the volume of work expected from them.   

We feel that the best golf course architecture, not only fulfills the expectations of the individual golfer, but also is totally descriptive to the contractor, sensitive to long-term maintenance and the environment, but is also an artistic endeavor.  It means the fine blending of natural assets into the necessary artificiality of golf features and play patterns so that the golf course elicits both a physical and an emotional involvement.  Our ultimate goal is to make golf a memorable, recreative experience! 

 We first determine the major activity or play areas on the course and then integrate them with natural or wildlife areas, to preserve when possible, animal corridors, existing vegetation and special geologic formations.  When prudent, we specify native or ornamental grass plantings, and if funds permit we try to develop a long-range plan which provides for the most artistic placement of the greatest diversity of plant materials to provide a wide range of color, texture and height.   

As a golf course architect, Dr. Hurdzan has accomplished a lot over the past 30 years.  But in addition to that, some reviewers are heralding his 400-page book on Golf Course Architecture as “the modern bible of golf course design.”  Links Magazine says, “Hurdzan takes you through the design process as no one ever has, the book is so complete, it is probably all you’ll ever need on this topic.”   Golf Digest calls Mike, “his field’s leader on environmental issues.”  Michael Hurdzan is GOLF WORLD Magazine’s 1997 “Architect of the Year,” and the Board Room’s 1999 choice for the same award.   

Dana Fry has worked with Dr. Michael Hurdzan since 1988, and became a full partner in 1997.   He is a member of the American Society of Golf Course Architects, and on its Board of Directors.  Golfweek magazine selected Dana among the TOP FIVE in their 2001 “40 under 40” list of people in leadership positions within the golf industry who are likely to shape the business for years to come.  Columbus Business First Newspaper has also honored him as one of its “40 under 40” Award winners for 2000.  The Business First award honors those individuals who have excelled in their careers and their community involvement to make a positive, lasting impact upon the city of Columbus.   

Fry studies his craft in the classical manner, by relentlessly surveying the best and worst of what his colleagues past and present have done.  Very few people in the design business spend as much time looking at other people’s work.  Dana’s ability to shape the land and hone artfully crafted bunkers is a talent and skill that has helped us become one of the most respected names in golf course architecture.   

 Our staff represents the very best blend of technology and artistry available.  But the secret of our success in neither science nor creativity alone, it is those qualities combined with a passion for golf, golf courses, and people.  Our clients are treated and consulted as co-designers and not just bill payers.  Our staff has great skills, small egos, and we put a high value on personal relationships.  At HURDZAN/FRY we have a vision, and synergy that combines engineering and artistry with the soul of a golfer.