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.
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 said. “Surround him with people who have been there, done that and have succeeded. Do not let him get around people who have been there, tried, failed and now are trying to teach him what they couldn’t do.”
He suggested that Claude Harmon III, the son of famed instructor Butch Harmon, who had his own stable of major winners, could help polish Kent’s self-taught swing. Fry tried calling Harmon for a week to no avail. Eventually, an email floated back that one of his assistants could fit him in for a lesson. But that wasn’t good enough for Kent. He wanted Harmon, not one of his acolytes. So, Fry called John Cook, a 10-time PGA Tour winner whom he had teamed up to design three courses together in the 1990s, including Cook’s Creek in Ohio, to see if he could open any doors.
As a child prodigy, Cook took lessons from World Golf Hall of Fame member and former CBS Sports golf analyst Ken Venturi. He was a fountain of knowledge, who had learned at the feet of Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson, and never charged Cook or his father for a single lesson.
“My dad tried to pay him numerous times, but he refused,” Cook recalls. “He had only one stipulation. He said when you find someone who could use this help, it’s your duty to pass it on.”
Cook had taken Patrick Cantlay under his wing previously, and he told Fry to send him three swing videos of Kent. Minutes later, Fry’s phone buzzed. Color Cook impressed.
“He hit it miles,” Cook recalled. “I’ve never seen anything like him. And he’s just going to get stronger and stronger.”
Don’t dabble in swing mechanics but do work on fitness
Cook offered to lend his expertise, and they began by working backwards. “We work from, OK, I know you can hit it far. Let’s figure out when to use it, and how to control trajectory and distance a lot easier.” But he didn’t want to dabble in swing mechanics. For that, he seconded Claude Harmon III and reached out to him personally. Suddenly, the instructor who helped Dustin Johnson and Brooks Koepka, raw talents who could bomb it, win multiple majors and achieve world No. 1, emailed back that he had an opening for a lesson in his schedule to see Kent at The Floridian, where he teaches.
After watching Kent hit balls, he sat him down in his office and asked about his fitness. Kent said he had been working out before COVID but hadn’t been as dedicated of late. Harmon was blunt. “I don’t need a story,” he said. “If you don’t take your fitness as seriously as your golf it’s not going to work because if you don’t, kids you are competing with will and they are going to outwork your ass.”
“I’ll do whatever you say,” Kent replied.
Harmon has become the most important person in Kent’s golf life.
Fry has pulled every string and called in every favor to help surround his step-son with an incredible group of mentors that also includes former U.S. Amateur champions Jay Sigel and John Harris, putting help from Brad Faxon, who tutors McIlroy, and mental coaching from Bhrett McCabe, who works with several Tour pros including Billy Horschel, and turned Kent’s biggest weakness into a strength.
“He’s got the inner belief that he always lacked,” said Fry, who also arranged for Kent to meet Fry’s hero, Tom Watson, in Kansas City, and play golf with Ben Crenshaw in Austin, Texas. “He knows he can beat any amateur on any given day.”
As a freshman golfer at the University of Iowa, Kent followed around the No. 1 player on the team “like a duck” the first semester, telling his coach at the first day of practice that he wanted to play him at practice. He beat him that day and led the team with a 72.8-stroke average in the spring, recording five top-25 finishes in seven events.
After opening the U.S. Amateur with 77, he rallied in the second round with six birdies and posted 64 to make the match play portion. Kent rolled all the way to the championship, where he fell 4 holes down with seven to play. He made a furious comeback to trail 1-down with one hole to play only to bogey the final hole. Despite the defeat, it is customary for both of the U.S. Amateur finalists to be invited to play in the Masters.
Kent returned to Iowa for his sophomore season, posting four top-13 finishes before hitting the transfer portal after the fall and selecting Florida – he’s sitting out this semester – because he believes coach J.C. Deacon and assistant coach, Dudley Hart, a former Tour winner, can help him achieve his goal of making it in the play-for-pay ranks.
In the ensuing years, McIlroy and Kent’s relationship has grown organically and in January they teed it up for the first time at Grove XXIII, Michael Jordan’s course. Kent still looks up to McIlroy, the world No. 2 and two-time winner on Tour this season, but he towers over him by a good seven inches. Asked if he is longer than McIlroy, Kent turns modest: “Might be,” he said. “But I wouldn’t be where I am without him.”
Kent got his first taste of the big league’s at the Tour’s Texas Children’s Houston Open two weeks ago. What’s did he learn? “To not eat seafood.” Kent got food poisoning, had to skip a practice round with Scottie Scheffler, and missed the cut. But he’s got practice rounds at the Masters lined up with Masters champions Dustin Johnson and Patrick Reed as well as Koepka and possibly Phil Mickelson.
But it’s the practice round with McIlroy that presents a full-circle moment with his hero who flipped his mind that golf should be his game. Earlier this year, when they played, Kent realized that McIlroy hits it significantly better than him and he has work to do. But after spending seven hours together, Kent left encouraged, telling Fry that McIlroy “really thinks I can do this.”
“It just means more coming from him,” Fry said.
Read the full article here