Trailblazing golfer working to get more Black women and girls in the game
There are few places where Lynnette Landry feels more at home than Hiawatha Golf Course in South Minneapolis.
Still, on a sunny, mildly windy and warm afternoon on a recent weekday, the 71-year-old lifelong golfer explains one still needs to warm up the body and mind. Landry’s father taught her that.
“He would just always say, ‘Go back to your basics, go back to your foundation. Start from there,’” Landry said as she took another swing. “Which is really good advice that I give others that I'm teaching.”
Landry grew up about a mile from the golf course. She picked up her first club around 4 years old and joined her brother, father and mother who all love the game. A Black family of golfers wasn’t common back then.
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“It didn’t even occur to me that I couldn’t become a pro golfer until I got into high school and I didn’t see other golfers like me,” Landry said.
Landry played the game through high school and college. She played pre-Title IX, the federal law passed in 1972 that removed barriers for many girls and women playing sports. Often, Landry was the only female golfer of color participating.
“When I was coming up, women worked or they were homemakers. There was nothing wrong with that. But if they were working, they were doing the best they could to put food on the table for their kids. And I think that’s true for a lot of the kids that are coming up these days.”
Throughout her life, and later as a coach at Central High School in St. Paul for more than a decade, the Hiawatha Golf Course remained a constant — a hub of support which kept her interested in pursuing the sport.
Hiawatha Golf Course is still the place Landry goes to give lessons and support her mission of getting more Black girls and women involved in golf. It’s why she doesn’t want to see the golf course change drastically — which is what could happen in the next few years.
Planning for the future while preserving the past
Hiawatha is the historic golf home of Solomon Hughes, Sr., who started playing there with other Black golfers in the 1940s. He was the first to successfully challenge segregation at Hiawatha’s clubhouse. Now, the clubhouse that once denied the elder Hughes entry was named in his honor last year by the Minneapolis Park Board.
Landry’s friend of 30 years and fellow golfer Charles Rodgers said golfers like Landry carry on that legacy.
“I’ve known her for about 40 years,” Rodgers said. “She’s a great person, and she’s been a tireless fighter for women’s golf.”
Rodgers founded a group called SaveHiawathaGolf18, asking the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board to preserve the golf course’s 18 holes, despite the Board’s concerns about flooding.
Major flooding in 2014 led the Board to begin a process intended to redesign the golf course in a way that would address a host of water issues, including flooding and the pollution of Lake Hiawatha, a small lake next to the golf course.
After five years of gathering input, the Park Board put out a plan that calls for the golf course to be reduced from 18 holes to nine in order to mitigate flooding and address stormwater flowing into the lake and marshland.
Despite objections from environmentalists who called for the land to be returned to its natural wetland and objections from golfers who wanted to maintain the historic 18-hole course, the plan was approved last year.
Design Project Manager and Landscape Architect for the Minneapolis Park Board Tyler Pederson explained the process2 of change.
“What we can do is actually move around a lot of the earth, kind of recreating the site’s topography by rearranging over 100 acres of the site to be half areas that are wetland or even open water,” Pederson said. “And then the other half would be a flood-resilient 9-hole golf course.”
The Board still needs to get funding to move forward with changing the landscape. If all goes as planned, construction would start in 2026.
But that compromise doesn’t sit right with some golfers.
“I mean, why should we take half of our history?” Rodgers said.
Rodgers said the Board has not shown adequate evidence that the best way forward requires cutting back on the course, and that less holes on the golf course equals less opportunities to host tournaments and leagues meant to broaden access to the sport — a mission he shares with Landry.
The game
Landry still teaches private lessons at Hiawatha Golf Course.
“For me, it’s just how I support the course. I love the people here. They’ve just been good to me.”
Landry lives in North Minneapolis now and still participates in tournaments across the country.
These days, it isn’t about winning or losing, it is about connecting with herself through the game. That is what Landry hopes more women will take away from sports.
“I think it’s just how it makes me feel,” Landry said. “Sunshine is my friend, I like being outside, the heat doesn’t bother me. It just fits. It’s hard to explain something that is just part of who I am.”
