AUGUSTA, Ga. — The week of the 2017 U.S. Open was an abject failure for Rory McIlroy, who packed up early and was among the truck slammers who missed the 36-hole cut. But before he departed, he took about five minutes to chat with Noah Kent, the 13-year-old stepson of Dana Fry, who was among the course designers at Erin Hills in Wisconsin, and changed the trajectory of a young man's life.
Kent looked up wide-eyed at McIlroy, who is listed as 5 feet 9 inches tall, and said, “You’re so small, how do you hit it so far?” McIlroy laughed and said, “Noah, I’m living proof that you can teach yourself to hit the ball. Power comes from your legs.”
And then he demonstrated for Kent how he tried to squat into the ground and push off to create power. It was a short visit but about a week later Kent received a gray Nike shirt autographed by McIlroy across the upper-right chest in the mail, which still hangs framed in his room. Two night’s later he barged into his parent’s bedroom and pronounced he knew what he was going to do with his life. He wanted to become a professional golfer like McIlroy.
Fry remembers thinking this won’t stick. Kent’s biological father works in the golf industry too as the general manager of a golf club in Florida and introduced him to the game, but Kent was more interested in other sports, particularly hockey.
Trading in ice skates and a stick for golf clubs
It turned out Kent meant business. He proceeded to quit his traveling hockey team and for the next two years he never missed a day of going to the golf course. A few months short of the eighth anniversary of meeting McIlroy on June 17, 2017, Kent will tee it up in a practice round at the 89th Masters on Tuesday with McIlroy.
“It just shows the power that athletes have,” Fry said. “That little bit of time can change a life. It completely changed the course of this kid’s life. Because of Rory, Noah’s playing in the Masters. I know it means something to Rory, I know it does. It has to.”
What happened in between that first meeting at Erin Hills and the 2025 Masters is remarkable in its own right. Guided by McIlroy’s swing tip, Kent holed up in his bedroom most nights for the next two years watching McIlroy’s swing on an iPad along with the powerful moves of Tiger Woods and Adam Scott and learned by osmosis.
On March 10, 2020, Fry took Kent to play Seminole Golf Club with director of golf Bob Ford, one of the most respected pros in the game. Kent drove the first green at the famed course and as the round concluded, Ford put an arm around Ford’s shoulder and told him don’t let anyone mess this kid up, except he used a different four-letter word than “mess.”
“It’s the first time I ever heard him curse,” Fry said.
In 1988, Fry was on the golf team at the University of Arizona when he met a member of Tom Fazio’s design team at a bar, who offered him a summer job flagging cacti for transplant at a course being built in Tucson. He’s worked as a golf course designer for the past 41 years with Jason Straka in the firm Fry-Straka Global Golf Course Design. He asked Ford what he could do to help Kent develop into the golfer he dreamed of becoming.
“He just needs to be taught how to play golf,” Ford ...
