Meyer is a Duluth architect and community builder writing about Downtown Duluth, politics, business, sports and economic development. Reach him at tim.meyer@meyergroupduluth.com
The question came from the back seat on the drive to a First Tee golf class at Essentia Wellness Center in Hermantown. It was one of those ordinary moments between a parent and a child, a short car ride filled with the small conversations that tend to drift in and out during everyday life.
“Why don’t you write about golf?”
It was my son asking about my work. By that point I had written eight columns, each one exploring something about our community or the world around us. Yet not one of them had touched on one of my favorite subjects, something that had quietly been part of my life for decades.
I didn’t have a quick answer. The question lingered for a moment longer than most passing comments, because in truth I had never really stopped to consider it. Golf had always been there for me, steady and familiar, but somehow it had not yet found its way into my writing.
Part of the reason, I realized later, was sadness. The closing of the Lester Park Golf Course in Duluth’s Lakeside neighborhood still stings. For many people in that part of the city, the course was more than a place to play golf. It was part of the neighborhood’s identity, a wide stretch of green that had been woven into everyday life for generations.
I spent two years working with neighbors trying to preserve that course — a place many residents valued not only for golf, but for its open green space and the sense of calm it provided in a busy world. Families walked there, children explored the edges of the fairways, and golfers found the same peaceful rhythm that courses have provided for more than a century.
The land eventually moved to the Duluth Economic Development Authority. During the planning process, in meetings before the Planning Commission and City Council, one word seemed to disappear from the discussion.
Golf.
Not once.
The absence still hurts, and many in the neighborhood remain hopeful that the city’s Land Use Steering Committee will recognize that a majority of residents would welcome the course back in some form. Even many non-golfers valued the landscape and what it represented — a rare piece of open, shared space in a neighborhood that had grown up around it.
My own connection to the game goes back more than five decades. Like many lifelong golfers, the memory of how it started remains surprisingly clear, even as the years pass.
I fell in love with golf when I was eight years old in Park Rapids, Minnesota. My younger sister, Cindy — a strong athlete herself — convinced me to sign up for a summer recreation golf class that was being offered through the local parks program.
She lasted three days. I stayed.
I was using third-hand clubs that once belonged to my father. They were far too big for me, and the shafts seemed impossibly long in my hands. To make them work, I simply choked up on the grips and swung anyway. Somehow it worked.
What drew me in was not competition. It was the feeling.
Anyone who has played the game knows it — the moment when the club meets the ball perfectly. The swing feels effortless, as though the motion happened on its own. The contact sends a sensation through your entire body, a brief vibration that travels from the clubhead through your hands and arms. You hear the sound, watch the ball rise into the air and travel farther than you could ever throw it.
For a young kid, that feeling was magic.
Golf also meant being outside with friends. Fresh-cut grass stretched across the fairways, and the greens looked like carefully tended carpets. Trees framed the edges of the course, swaying gently in the wind on warm summer afternoons. The smell of summer was everywhere — grass, soil and sunshine.
It was a quiet place that felt removed from everything else, a small world where time slowed down just enough to notice the details around you.
I rarely worried about my score. In fact, I usually played better when I stopped thinking about it altogether. The less I focused on numbers, the easier the swing seemed to come.
Golf became the first sport where I realized I might actually be good at something.
By junior high school, teachers and community members in my small town had noticed that several of us could play. Word traveled quickly in a small community, especially when a handful of young players started to show promise on the local course.
My best friend’s father — a local dentist — volunteered to organize us into a team. None of us were particularly concerned with formal titles or structured programs. We simply gathered, practiced together and gradually began entering competitions.
We practiced and competed together, even though we were only 12 and 13 years old. Sometimes we played against high school teams. We won some matches. We lost others — sometimes badly. Golf has a way of delivering both outcomes with equal clarity, without much room for excuses.
Those early competitions introduced the life lessons the game quietly teaches: perseverance, discipline, follow-through and respect for opponents and teammates. Golf is patient but honest, rewarding careful work and exposing lapses in focus. The competitive side occasionally wore on me, but it never diminished the love of the game itself.
As I grew older, golf also became a gateway to travel and relationships. Courses took me to new parts of the country and introduced me to landscapes that were entirely different from the small-town fairways where I first learned the game.
New courses meant new landscapes and new challenges. More importantly, they meant time spent with people who shared the same affection for the sport.
Many friendships — and even business relationships — developed on fairways and greens. Away from offices and daily pressures, people talked more freely about their lives, families and aspirations. The game created space for connection.
Last October, I experienced something new: my first round of golf with my son.
It came on the final day of his First Tee class at Enger Park Golf Course in Duluth. Parents were invited to join the young players for a round, creating a moment where generations of golfers shared the same course. Coaches Walt Tabory, a former college golf coach, and Sam Mesedahl led the group.
It was one of those perfect October afternoons — the kind of warm, bright day that signals the closing stretch of the golf season. The air carried just enough chill to remind everyone that winter was coming, but the sun still held the warmth of late fall. Twenty kids walked the course together.
For the first time, I watched my son play beside me rather than from a distance. I could see that he understood the game — the swing, the rhythm, the patience it demands. More importantly, I could see the same thing in all the kids. They had discovered the feeling. The love of the game.
Golf has always crossed boundaries. On that Enger Park course were boys and girls from different backgrounds, learning together in a way that felt natural and unforced. The game doesn’t ask about race, income or social standing. It simply asks whether you are willing to step onto the grass, pick up a club and try.
Generations of players have experienced that same connection.
Fifty-five years after I first picked up those oversized clubs in Park Rapids, the feeling remains unchanged. Golf is not disappearing. And it certainly is not reserved only for the wealthy or powerful. Anyone who has watched the crowds following Tiger Woods understands how deeply the game resonates with people.
Golf endures because of the lessons it teaches and the relationships it creates.
At its core, the game remains something simple: a quiet moment outdoors, a club in your hands, and the brief, perfect sound of a well-struck ball rising into the sky.
