TAT Filipinas Golf Club, San Pedro, Laguna, Philippines

Text and photos by Fernando Sepe Jr, ABS-CBNnews.com

MANILA, Philippines – Golf and the environment don’t come together easily. At least not in Asia and certainly not in the Philippines.

Golf course architect Dana Fry wants to change that.

The Hong Kong-based Fry, who is tasked with looking after the projects of his company, Hurdzan Fry Environmental Golf Course Design, in the Asia-Pacific region, was recently in the Philippines to look into possibilities of building an environment-friendly golf course from the ground up.

Fry was a guest of Atty. Edna Paña of Tat Filipinas, a golf course in San Pedro, Laguna that practices an environmentally sustainable operation.
 
The two met each other at a golf conference in Kuala Lumpur back in 2009. Fry heard Paña talking about environmental sustainability and they immediately found a common interest.
 
Paña put those words into action by adopting a sustainable approach in the operation of the 30-year old Tat Filipinas golf course, starting with the use of native vegetation as part of the course landscape.

Today around 22 hectares of the 50-hectare course is devoted to natural vegetation that not only reduced 30% of the operating cost but has become a habitat for both wildlife and fruit-bearing trees. In fact, if you play on any given day there, you’ll find a variety of fruits and root crops for sale in the lobby

“I can walk around and see the native habitat with my own eyes,” Fry said about the course. “And I’ve seen seven or eight courses over four visits in the Philippines and with what they have done here (at Tat) there is nobody even close to that.”
 
Fry lamented the lack of willingness among golf course developers in Asia to go environmental.

“They keep building courses just to sell real estate and fill hotel rooms,” Fry noted.
 
Fry further stressed that the only way to grow the game in Asia is to make it accessible for everyone so that you grow the number of players and the only way to do this is to offer lower green fees staffed with teaching pros.

And the money saved on operating costs by turning “green” can help make this feasible, he said.

‘Living research’ laboratory
 
Fry joined the Hurdzan Fry Environmental Golf Course Design in 1988 after working with renowned golfer Tom Fazio.

It was Dr. Michael Hurdzan who pioneered a study on environmental sustainability in golf courses by designing a golf course that would become a “living research” laboratory.
 
Hurdzan and Fry converted an abandoned sand and gravel quarry in Scituate, Massachusetts and converted it into a public links golf course now called Widow’s Walk. The course design called for the use of grasses native in the area, which would cut the use of fertilizer and pesticides. They also consumer less water; only 30 acres of the 100-acre course area are irrigated.

“Back then, the golfing community looked at Dr. Hurdzan as crazy,” Fry recalled, adding that in the early years, green meant “beautiful” as exemplified by courses such as the Augusta National, home of the US Masters.
 
But from the late 1990s to the early 2000s, environmental golf slowly became the buzzword in the golfing industry.

“Our company became the sort of go-to guys from the mid-‘90s on through mid-2008 before the economy crashed. We were getting a lot of work from the developers because Dr. Hurdzan can talk to the environmental people and address their issues,” Fry said.
 
U.S. Open

Hurdzan and Fry are best known for the construction of Erin Hills in Erin, Wisconsin, which began in 2005.

Fry said they knew before they even opened the course that it would host some of the biggest tournaments in the United States.
 
Even before it officially opened in 2006, Erin Hills was already chosen to host the US Women’s Amateur Public Links Championship in 2008 and the US Amateur in 2011 by the United States Golf Association (USGA).
 
The USGA events caught the attention of Mike Davis, executive director of the US National Open Championship, who, in June 2010, awarded the 2017 U.S. Open to Erin Hills.

The last time the U.S. Open was awarded to a living golf course architect was in 1970 with the Robert Trent Jones, Sr.-designed Hazeltine National Golf Club in Chaska, Minnesota.

It will also be only the sixth time in the 111-year history of the Open that it will be played on a public course.
 
“It is unbelievable, unprecedented because most U.S. Opens are held in courses that are a hundred years old and have quite a history,” said Fry, obviously thrilled with the attention and opportunity of hosting one of only four major golf championships in the world.
 
Fry believes part of the reason is the size of Erin Hills, which is nestled on a 700-acre (283-hectare) lot that can accommodate over 100,000 spectators compared, say, to the Merion Golf Club, which will host the 2013 Open, at 108 acres.
 
The large area is also ideal for any adjustments in terms of length that designers now have to make to courses in the face of long-hitters such as Tiger Woods and the rest of the top players in the world.
 
But the most notable feature of Erin Hills is its use of fescue and wild grasses.

Unknown to many, the old courses in Scotland and Ireland all use varieties of fescues, and that’s the reason why when one is watching the British Open, for example, the fairways would look “dry” with large patches of brown areas.
 
But compared to blue grass or bentgrass, fescue, being native to the environment, takes far less water, fertilizer and pesticides.
 
“We are just going back to the way golf started. St. Andrews in Scotland was not a built golf course, it is mowed by sheep,” Fry said.

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