CHASKA, Minn. – The first time Noah Kent played Seminole Golf Club was with legendary golf pro Bob Ford. Kent was 16 years old, just old enough to earn a tee time on the venerable Donald Ross layout, and he made an immediate impression.
“He drives the first green,” said Kent’s stepfather, course designer Dana Fry, who was part of the foursome that day.
Ford later put his arm around Fry while walking down the 16th fairway and offered a simple piece of advice, “Don’t let anybody mess with this kid.”
Influenced and mentored by titans from all corners of the game, Kent transformed from a natural talent into one of the last two men standing at this 124th U.S. Amateur.
“You work so hard for things like this,” said Kent, who will face Spain’s Josele Ballester in Sunday’s final at Hazeltine National, “and for it to actually happen is crazy.”
Just seconds after Saturday afternoon’s semifinal victory, Kent was overcome by emotion. Tears flowing, he was then mobbed by a wave of backers just off the 18th green – Fry; his mother, Trisha; his dad, David, and his wife, Ashley; and over a dozen more relatives and friends, many of them wearing Hawkeye-yellow Caitlin Clark shirts that had been flown in from Iowa City that morning.
“The overnight success and the breakthrough, it takes a lot of hours to make it,” David Kent said. “He has an unmatched circle of support to drive him to where he is right now. This is a remarkable achievement, but it’s not a surprise. He’s had it inside the whole time. It’s his time, and it’s been a blessing and a privilege to watch the entire family rally around him.”
Fry started dating Trisha when Noah was 9 years old. As an introduction, Fry invited Noah for a round at Calusa Pines, a course Fry helped design in Kent’s hometown of Naples, Florida. Next thing young Noah knew, he was having a chipping contest with six-time PGA Tour winner Rocco Mediate.
At age 13, Noah met Rory McIlroy during the 2017 U.S. Open at Erin Hills. A few months later, they reconnected at a TaylorMade shoot at Shelter Harbor in Charleston, Rhode Island, and upon returning home, an inspired Kent informed his parents he was quitting hockey.
“He tells his mom and I, ‘I’ve decided all I’m going to do is play golf, I’m going to play on the PGA Tour, and I’m going to win,’” Fry recalled. “And after that, every night for two or three years, you’d walk by his room, and he’d have his iPad out and all you would hear is the sound of a guy hitting a golf ball.”
It was McIlroy who taught Kent how to generate power with his small frame, simply pointing to his legs when asked how McIlroy became one of the Tour’s longest drivers. When Kent grew nearly a foot over three years of high school – he’s now 6-foot-5 – he hit it so far that he had to rein in his speed with help from renowned instructor Claude Harmon III, who was first on Fry’s list of swing coaches who wouldn’t mess up the promising teenager.
Kent switched to virtual school during the pandemic so he could spend more time at Naples National practicing and playing, often with the “Wolfpack,” a group where the average age sits in the mid-60s. He also counts a trio of U.S. Amateur champions as mentors: John Cook, who is on the Golf Channel broadcast this week; Jay Sigel, a nine-time Walker Cupper; and John Harris, still the last mid-amateur to win this championship when he did so in 1993 at age 41.
“He always jokes that his best friends are all in their 60s and 70s,” Fry said.
That village took Noah to the University of Iowa, where he’s entering his sophomore season. Hawkeyes coach Tyler Stith remembers when Kent arrived on campus as a freshman, just getting over a broken right wrist that shelved him for 11 weeks. The team’s big intrasquad tournament, which pits the upperclassmen versus the younger guys, was approaching, and Kent wanted Iowa’s best player, fifth-year senior and two-time Big Ten individual champion Mac McClear.
Kent beat McClear – twice.
On Tuesday night, Stith texted Kent, who had just qualified for match play at Hazeltine, and challenged him:
When you’re lying in bed tonight, create an image of someone you wouldn’t want to face. … I’m imagining someone who doesn’t beat themselves, plays their own game, and gets up and down all day long. How about you?
Tomorrow that person is you.
Kent responded: I am that person is right. I imagine that person who played McClear ... and waxed him.
This was the text that @IowaHawkeyeGolf coach Tyler Stith sent to Noah Kent before match play.
— Brentley Romine (@BrentleyGC) August 17, 2024
When Noah was a freshman, he asked to play a fifth-year senior who was twice a Big Ten champ, Mac McClear, in a fall intrasquad event. He beat him in both matches. pic.twitter.com/UorJiSZwAo
That fearless freshman showed up again Saturday as Kent got the best of Buchanan, a rising Illinois senior and the reigning Big Ten Player of the Year. A day after carding six birdies and an eagle in his first 12 holes, Kent had to grind this one out. Clinging to a 1-up lead, Kent yanked his second shot into a nasty lie at the par-5 15th. After Buchanan drained a 25-footer for birdie, Kent canned a 15-footer on top of him to tie the hole.
“I don’t know what it is with me, I love whenever the pressure gets really high,” Kent said. “I’ve been feeling it the whole week. … It was just like another out-of-body experience to see it go in the hole, and the momentum stayed with me.”
On the next, the difficult par-4 16th, Buchanan, who hit just two fairways all match, hooked his drive toward the creek, watching his ball strike a spectator and ricochet into the water.
“What else is going to happen to me today?” Buchanan bemoaned as he approached his submerged ball.
Minutes later, he was 2 down.
Buchanan got in trouble again on No. 18, finding a left fairway bunker off the tee and then catching the lip with his approach. Kent then stuffed one from the fairway and was conceded the match before Buchanan even made it to the green.
“It’s easy to give up in this game, and I didn’t,” Buchanan said. “I’ll take that with me when I leave.”
Kent scooped up his ball, took off his hat and shook Buchanan’s hand – and then it all hit him at once. Kent has played all over the world and on some of the game’s most cherished cathedrals. But now, he had clinched the right to compete in next summer’s U.S. Open at Oakmont, where Ford also was a longtime pro, and could soon expect an invite to Augusta National for next spring’s Masters Tournament as well.
He used to struggle with confidence, but not anymore.
“It’s all up here in my heart,” said Kent, who just shrugs off that No. 560 ranking in the world amateur rankings, which will surely surge. “I have way more competitiveness. I feel like I have a lot more belief in myself, and I have a lot more drive to want to get where I want to go.”
Before Kent met Sigel, Fry asked his stepson, not yet in high school, what his goals in amateur golf were. Kent responded: “Win the U.S. Amateur and make the U.S. Walker Cup team.”
Though a win Sunday would not earn an automatic berth, Kent already has the attention of captain Nathan Smith, who will lead the Americans into Cypress Point next summer.
Harris has the 2025 Walker Cup circled on his calendar, too. Harris, a Minnesota native, couldn’t make it to Hazeltine as he’s currently undergoing treatment for leukemia. He said that while not in remission, he did receive some good news from his doctors a couple weeks ago and that “recovery is coming.”
But for now, Harris will have to watch from afar.
“I’m sitting on the edge of my chair,” Harris said Saturday via phone. “Noah knows who he is, he understands what he’s doing, and if I’m a little motivation – I’ve said to him, ‘I’m so happy watching this golf. I’m so disappointed I’m not at Hazeltine cheering for you, but I am there.’ And he feels it.”
And sees it.
Kent has kept Harris on his mind this week by writing Harris’ initials on his golf glove. J.H., it’s the last thing Kent sees before he hits a shot.
And it’s a reminder that he’s not alone.