Dr. Michael Hurdzan

Dr. Michael Hurdzan started out in golf at Beacon Light Golf Course in Columbus, Ohio, where his father worked as a golf instructor. Jack Kidwell owned the facility, a man deeply involved in the game as a PGA member, course superintendent and golf course architect.

Jack Kidwell offered Mike a position in his design company and six years later the firm of Kidwell and Hurdzan Incorporated was founded in 1976. By the end of the following decade, the partnership was responsible for setting out more than a hundred courses across the Mid-west.

Not long after Jack Kidwell retired from their design company through ill health in the mid-1980s, Hurdzan teamed up with Dana Fry, who had previously worked with Tom Fazio. Their first project together was in 1990 at Devil’s Pulpit in Ontario, Canada and two years later they followed this up with another 18-hole layout, Devil’s Paintbrush, on the same Caledon Village property.

Most of the Hurdzan and Fry assignments were located in North America and their most high-profile commission was undoubtedly Erin Hills in Wisconsin, which opened for play in 2006. The course has since hosted both the US Amateur Championship in 2011 and the US Open in 2017.

It mustn’t be forgotten that Jason Straka also worked with Hurdzan and Fry for seventeen years, starting in 1995. And when Hurdzan and Fry went their separate ways in 2013, Jason teamed up with Dana to focus on more global markets, leaving Michael to concentrate mainly on North America with his son Chris.

Michael is one of only seven people to have received professional service awards from each of the following organisations: Golf Course Builders Association of America (Don Rossi Award in 2002); American Society of Golf Course Architects (Donald Ross Award in 2007); Golf Course Superintendents Association of America (Old Tom Morris Award in 2013). He also held the position of President of the American Society of Golf Course Architects in 1984-85.

Website: https://www.hurdzangolf.com/people