After all, he’s a true-blue Midwesterner. Born and raised in Springfield, Ohio, near Dayton, Andy caddied at his hometown country club, attended college in Columbus, worked at Dayton Country Club and most recently served 14-plus years as PGA Master Professional at Kansas City Country Club in Mission Hills, Kansas. Not surprisingly, his favorite sports teams are the Ohio State Buckeyes and the Kansas City Chiefs and his preferred meal is steak and potatoes.
Amid the heaping helping of the Midwest, Andy took a professional side trip to Boston from 2009 through 2011, where he served as a staff golf professional at The Country Club in Brookline, Mass. One of the five founding clubs of the USGA in 1894 and a four-time U.S. Open venue, The Country Club was the perfect stopping point for Andy to learn the finer points of elite-level club culture, under the tutelage of legendary director of golf Brendan Walsh.
After a lifetime in the Eastern and Central time zones, Andy, Erin, his wife of nearly 25 years and son Nolan, 14, are enjoying the transition to Southwestern desert dwellers. The Fisher family has been treated to Chamber of Commerce weather and Andy has relished being greeted with open arms by the Membership. Andy Fisher is and always has been an early-to-work, late-to-leave pro’s pro, but we got him to take a few minutes to share some of the memories that shaped him on his journey.
What was your first exposure to golf?
I lost my grandfather when I was in third grade, but he gets credit for first introducing me to the game of golf. My first official golfing experience came through caddying at age 12. I was dominating the lawn mowing circuit in my neighborhood, and one of my friends mentioned that his older brother was caddying and they paid cash and they paid you in hot dogs. So, I received an in depth education through caddying at Springfield Country Club. We got to play the course on Monday afternoons, walk and carry. It was my first experience with a private club environment. And I thought that environment was fantastic. I gained exposure to people of different backgrounds — business owners, lawyers, doctors — that I had no experience with, and just fell in love with that environment from a very young age.
Who influenced you most, both personally and professionally as you made your way in life and your career?
One of the first golf professionals I ever worked for was Eddie Kline, who’s at the Lakes Golf and Country Club in Columbus, Ohio. Eddie and his wife introduced me to my wife by way of a blind date. Moreover, he was the best coach/teacher I ever had on how to interact with members. He treated everybody like gold. Probably nobody’s membership in the country thinks more of their guy than the Lakes does of Eddie Kline.
Who’s in your dream foursome?
My grandfather on my mom’s side, Louie Baker, who introduced me to golf is one. The Country Club’s Brendan Walsh is another. I learned so much from him, especially that no matter the stature of the club, the job, at its core, was about taking care of the Members and the staff. Tom Watson fills out the foursome. Tom was my early golf hero and he’s been an important figure to me over the last 15 years.
You earned PGA Master Professional status, awarded to less than 2% of the total PGA of America membership. What does that designation mean and how did you achieve that?
It’s Continuing Education for the PGA of America. My Master Professional Program was in Player Development, a new area at the time I went through the program. I was the first one. It took a couple of years, research, and several papers written and documents submitted. You go back and forth with a small group of people throughout the process and at the end, you present to the Education Department of the PGA of America, 11 or 12 people, who ask questions. It’s a lot of defending your work, like it would be for any thesis or dissertation. Player Development is at the core of what we do between teaching and tournaments and programming. It took some extra work on my part, but I’m very proud of getting to the finish line and knowing I’ve kept myself in the forefront of that golf professional development area in my career.
What made you take the Desert Mountain job?
We’d never thought we’d move west. When Erin asked me to tell her about Desert Mountain, I told her, honestly, there’s no bottom to the possibilities of what Desert Mountain can bring to the table. The club is a unicorn. There’s nothing like it. The potential development of our team is fantastic here. The diverse Membership is fantastic. We’ve got 48 or 49 states covered in Membership as well as countries across the globe. You also throw in the USGA Four-Ball Championship and you include the leadership team, with Damon DiOrio as your CEO and being able to have a pro respected industry-wide like John Lyberger here prior to me — these are all the things that made it such an unbelievable opportunity. Personally, Phoenix has great autism resources as well, which is very helpful for our family, as Nolan was diagnosed with severe autism at age 3. We didn’t even realize Phoenix had that when we started looking. Professionally to me, this is a place that has everything you could possibly want.
What are the goals you’ve set for yourself and your team to elevate Desert Mountain even further?
My biggest push for our staff, and this requires a little bit of change, is to heighten the personalization of our Member Experience. While it is a little more challenging here because the Membership is so big, our team will push for that more intimate feel and more personalized relationship-building than what has been here in the past.
Second, we’re going to emphasize team development. I would love for our young golf professionals to come up through our program and develop into their own head golf professionals. Personal growth is very important, and it’s also something our Membership can take a lot of pride in.
This story was originally written by Joe Passov, a Golf Writers Association of America (GWAA) award-winning journalist. Read the article in the Spring 2026 issue of Inside Desert Mountain Magazine.
