Boulder Creek (Nevada) Golf Club is just a short 40-minute drive from Edward Fryatt’s Las Vegas-area home. The golf course has always been among his favorites, which brought no shortage of good vibes this week in the Golfweek Senior Desert Showdown. Familiarity was one variable, perhaps, that helped the 55-year-old Fryatt romp to a six-shot victory over Stephen Nichols.
Fryatt’s 16-under total included rounds of 67-65-68. He made two eagles in the final round.
“I drove the ball good, I just kind of managed my game,” he said when asked to assess his play. “I’ve been on a pretty good run the last few weeks, so I was happy to come away with the win.”
Fryatt wasn’t the only player who authored a big victory at the Golfweek Desert Senior. In the Super
Senior division, Bob Easterlin of Frisco, Texas, authored an even bigger one by finishing 11 shots ahead of George Muhar from Palm Desert, California.
In the Legend division, David Ujihara of Brea, California, was 12 under and nine shots ahead of runner-up Terry Tyson of Perrysburg, Ohio. Greg Mokler of Timnath, Colorado, finished 54 holes at 8 under, which was six shots better than Neil Spitalny of Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Fryatt said the winning margin belied the amount of nerves he felt in building it. Still, he’s an accurate driver of the golf ball and a good lag putter who recently has felt he can make a timely putt when needed. That makes all the difference, and indeed, Fryatt entered the Desert Senior off victories in the Carlton Woods Senior Invitational and Nevada State Senior Amateur over the past two months.
Having aged into senior amateur competition in April, Fryatt – like many players – is learning how to make the most of this chapter of his golf life. Fryatt comes at it with a different perspective. After graduating from UNLV in 1994, he headed to PGA Tour Q-School.
Fryatt fell short of his card that year, but competed on the Nike Tour in 1995, beginning a foray into professional golf that lasted just more than a decade. He earned his full card for the first time for the 2000 Tour season. In all, he played 105 PGA Tour events – making the cut in just less than half – in addition to starts on what was then the Nike Tour plus a three-year stint in Asia. The highlights included one Nike Tour victory, a handful of wins in international opens, and three U.S. Open starts – including a best finish of T-24 in the 1997 Open at Congressional.
After he endured 18 consecutive missed cuts during the 2003 Nike Tour season, Fryatt made the difficult decision that it was time for a career change. He was 33 and felt lost playing a game he had loved since he was 12 years old.
He is still moved to tears talking about it.
“An 11-year professional career comes to an end,” Fryatt said. “It’s a tough loss. It hurts now to even talk about it. It’s devastating. It’s devastating for a marriage, it’s devastating to your ego because so much is tied up in how you play when you’re a professional. I had to turn the page.”
Fryatt pivoted into a career as a State Farm Insurance agent. He shelved his golf clubs, picked up mountain biking and had left the game behind – until turning the TV on one day in 2014 and spotting his old caddie, Tim “Smiley” Thalmueller, on the bag for Gene Sauers at the U.S. Senior Open. Fryatt picked up a club for the first time that very day – July 27, 2014 – and applied for amateur reinstatement shortly thereafter.
He can still remember copying-and-pasting his way down the application: “I haven’t touched a club in 10 years.” After he was reinstated, returning to the game was a journey of its own. In his first event back – a local tournament in Mesquite, Nevada – Fryatt also remembers standing over a one-foot putt early in the round and his hands shaking.
“For me, I left on such a downer and so lost that when I came back 10 years later, I felt like I started from scratch – and with a lot of scar tissue, a lot of bad memories,” he said.
Back then, he was mostly playing local events and some state amateur events. He remembers competing in the Pacific Coast Amateur, a top amateur event, and having the realization that young players had passed him by.
Fryatt attempted to qualify for the U.S. Senior Amateur and the U.S. Senior Open this past year, but came up just short of each. The longer he is around the game, the more he has learned how to build a national schedule of 54-hole events that will improve his status in the World Amateur Golf Ranking to a point that he could gain entry into those events through his ranking rather than through one-day qualifiers.
Much of his drive to play USGA championships comes from the memories he still carries from the ones he competed in as a younger player – a handful of U.S. Amateurs, U.S. Mid-Amateurs and of course those three U.S. Opens. Just as it is for many competitors, USGA championships remain the gold standard for Fryatt.
“It’s part of the reason why I want to take that 18-hole little test out of the equation, if possible,” he said.
Fryatt understands when competitors raise their eyebrows at his background in professional golf. At the same time, he – like many in the game – still enjoys the camaraderie.
“I do have a love for the game, I do enjoy playing with the guys,” he said. “I’m always appreciative of the friendship and the opportunity to play.”
This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Senior success helps Edward Fryatt leave pro golf memories in the past
