April 16, 2021 by Philip Lewenstein

Closing of Lester Park Golf Course: Removing Part of My Youth

Growing up in Duluth, my summer home away from home was the Lester Park Golf Course, one of the city’s two public courses. Thus, I was disappointed to learn in February that the course will close after the 2023 season.

The Lester Park Golf Course, set alongside the Lester River, is located in the east end of Duluth, about three miles from our old house on 29^th Avenue East on Superior Street. I often took the bus to the end of the line at 61^st Avenue East, then walked a few blocks up Lester River Road until reaching the course on the right.

The course is known for its natural beauty with a panoramic view of Lake Superior and clumps of trees bordering many holes. One can see the lake from 20 of the 27 holes. The original 18 holes total 6,371 yards, par 72. Another nine holes added later total 3,417 yards, par 36. Each nine holes have two par fives, two par threes, and five par fours.

I started playing golf when I was 10 or 11, taking lessons on the Lester Park driving range from the club professional. I did not take particularly well to the sport, suffering from topped balls, sharp slices, and wicked hooks. I was allergic to the middle of fairways, often sending my shots into the woods bordering many of Lester’s holes.

However, unlike several of my friends who suffered temper tantrums on the course and often broke clubs, I maintained my equanimity, enjoying the sport and the opportunity for outdoor recreation.

I practiced putting on the carpet in my house, often creating indoor courses, imitating the styles of professional golfers, and keeping their scores. I practiced my swing by hitting wiffle balls in the backyard, inflicting divots in the lawn.

I followed the dramatic successes of the great golfers of the time: Arnie Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, and Gary Player. And one summer, I saw them play an exhibition at the Brown Deer course in Milwaukee. I read about their great predecessors: Sam Snead, Ben Hogan, Walter Hagen, and Byron Nelson. In my tenth-grade English class, I wrote my first research paper on the history of golf.

Gradually, I learned, but did not master, the basic elements of the game and enjoyed entering several youth tournaments, usually landing in the higher flights based on scores in the qualifying rounds. I appreciated these competitions because organized youth sports were limited compared to today.

My first job, besides snow shoveling, was caddying at Lester Park. My friends and I would sit on the benches in front of the clubhouse. When a golfer, potential client, approached from the parking lot, we would jump up and ask if he or she wanted a caddy. Often, our wait was long, but eventually we would hook up, no pun intended, with a golfer. These were the days before electric golf carts. We may have earned three or four dollars a round plus a small tip.

One summer, on break from college at the University of Minnesota, I worked in the sports department at the Duluth News Tribune and covered the local summer golf circuit, a tournament each weekend at a local or regional course. Usually I walked the course following the tournament leaders on the last day, did interviews, and filed stories.

Even though the golf season in northern Minnesota is short, the area had many outstanding golfers at all age levels, including several who won state tournaments. Each course had several stellar golfers. Duluth has two public courses: Enger Park, a hilly layout that I played occasionally, and Lester Park. Also, there are two country clubs: Northland and Ridgeview.

When I read that Lester Park will be closing, I felt part of my youth being lost. In February, the city announced that it is permanently closing the Lester Park Golf Course after the 2023 golf season due to declining use and lack of money for repairs.

City leaders closed the Lester Park course last April as a belt-tightening measure owing to COVID-19. Lester Park will remain closed in 2021 and 2022 because of cost, but the city plans to open it for a final season in 2023 while the Enger Park course is upgraded.

Duluth chief administrative officer Noah Schuchman said that the city’s failure to sell Lester Park real estate, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the collapse of the economy made it clear Duluth can’t continue to operate two golf courses.

In 2019, a task force found that the future of the Lester and Enger golf courses was in jeopardy because of an oversupply of golf options in Duluth, failing golf infrastructure, and not enough city funds to fix both courses to today’s standards.

Certainly, much has changed in golf over the past 50 years since I last played regularly at Lester Park, and I have not followed local developments.

After finishing college, I only played a few, occasional rounds, although I would often hit balls at local driving ranges.

In recent years, besides watching the major tournaments on TV featuring Tiger Woods, my main golf activity has been finding golf balls on my daily walks ( “Finding Golf Balls Is Not a Compulsion But I Sure Enjoy the Sport, November 6, 2017, www.philsfocus.com ). I possess hundreds of balls, and should I ever resume playing, I will not have to worry about spraying and losing balls in the woods and other hazards.

I had not been familiar with the origin and history of Lester Park until I purchased Duluth’s Historic Parks: The First 100 Years by Nancy S. Nelson and Tony Dierckins (2017 Zenith City Press) for my mother shortly before she died.

The history of the Lester Park Golf Course is linked to that of the Enger Park Golf Course, according to Nelson and Dierckins. Enger was established in 1926, and by June 1927 the Enger course and clubhouse were open.

Unemployment caused by the Great Depression and the success of Enger led to the idea of a second municipal course. Total cost was estimated at $76,000. Several affluent Duluthians provided the needed cash, $25,000, to underwrite the initial construction cost of the course’s first nine holes.

Park superintendent F. Rodney Paine, who had the idea for a second course, took Andy Anderson from Enger Park to lead development of the Lester Park course. Anderson drew the course layout by hand and had the holes reviewed by Tom Vardon, the pro at the White Bear Lake Yacht Club, then one of the state’s top courses. In a letter to Paine, Vardon wrote the following:

“I think it is a beauty and is worth a lot of interest from the Duluth people, because when finished you will have something more than you anticipated. This is a wonderful piece of ground, just made for a golf course. Every hole is different; plenty of variety of shots; a real championship course. The scenery is wonderful from all parts of the course, standing well around the beautiful lake and surrounding hills. You cannot beat it.”

Construction was tied to a plan created by citizens and the Duluth City Council to provide jobs to unemployed citizens. Duluth City Works Administration operated like the federal Works Project Administration and Civilian Conservation Corps campus that would later be established by the Roosevelt Administration.

On October 24, 1930, 75 unemployed men began to clear trees, brush, and boulders from the course. By the end of November, the men had cleared nine fairways by hand. The first nine holes opened to the public on May 27, 1932, and the second nine holes were developed that year. Lester Park Golf Course was formally dedicated June 11, 1933.

The history of the course was relatively quiet since its dedication, Nelson and Dierckins note, providing enjoyment to generations of Duluthians, who participated in tournaments, leagues, youth programs, and informal outings.

The authors point out that Duluth’s public courses saw few capital improvements, a testament to the original construction; however, at various times, citizens criticized city leaders for not doing enough with the courses.

In the late 1980s, Mayor John Fedo and other city leaders felt that adding nine holes to both Enger and Lester Park, with the popularity of golf rising nationally, would be one idea to support the effort to make Duluth a convention center.

Duluth hired Richard Phelps of Denver to design the additions. He found a spot at Enger Park between the original front and back nines to create what is known as the Middle nine. At Lester Park, he took a heavily-wooded area along a sloping hillside west of the front nine and transformed it into a set of links known as the Lake nine.

The Lake nine opened in summer 1991. In October, Duluth News Tribune sportswriter Joe Bissen described the addition as follows: “Aesthetically, the Lake nine can’t be matched anywhere in town. Hole for hole, not even Northland Country Club can match the sweeping panoramas on Lester’s Lake nine; the Lake nine embodies everything that northern Minnesota does.”

I have not had the opportunity to see or play on the additional nines at Lester and Enger.

In 1998, Golf Digest named Duluth “best city in America for public golf,” calling the city “the best urban center in America when it comes to offering excellent and affordable public golf.” The article highlighted the Enger Park and Lester Park courses.

The national golf boom occurred from the mid-1980s to 2004. According to the National Golf Foundation, the number of golf courses in the United States increased from 12,510 courses in 1986 to 16,112 golf courses in 2004 but fell to 14,794 in 2016.  Golf participation in the United States grew from 19.7 million golfers in 1986 to 30 million in 2004 before falling to 23.8 million in 2016.

Government-owned courses contributed to the national boom, including Nemadji in Superior, Lakeview National in Two Harbors, and Black Bear in Cloquet as well as the additions to Lester Park and Enger Park. Duluth grew its own inventory by 50 percent from 36 to 54 holes in 1989 with the new nines at Enger and Lester.

From 1984 to 2003, 72 new publicly-accessible holes within 30 miles of Duluth opened, representing 43 percent of public holes in operation in the area.

However, contraction occurred. From 2000 to 2018, the number of golf rounds played in the United States decreased 23 percent, then stabilized, according to the National Golf Foundation.

In 2020, however, golf had a resurgence during the COVID-19 pandemic, with an increase of about half a million new players than in 2019 (“How Golf Hopes to Keep Winning After Covid,” by Pat Dooley, Wall Street Journal, April 10-11, 2021).

Golf-course operators are trying to make sure the growth continues; they seek ways to keep new golfers returning as the country gets back to normalcy, Dooley says. As cabin fever gripped the country, the two most-popular activities were binge-watching TV and playing golf, he says. Three million Americans played golf on a course for the first time last year, a record number of beginners, up about 570,000 from 2019.

“Course operators are aiming to make the game more informal and responsive to newcomers by loosening the dress code, easing some rules of play, and offering shortened rounds,” Dooley says. “They’re also trying to play up the idea of golf as a social occasion or opportunity for exercise rather than just a sport. And they have to implement all these changes without driving away the longtime golfers they already have.”

From 2000 to 2018, the number of rounds played at Enger Park and Lester Park decreased by about 44 percent, 108,000 to 61,099—33,179 at Enger and 27,920 at Lester. In 2019, 51,300 rounds were played with 38,940 projected for 2020.

The Duluth public golf program had a net loss of $103,399 in 2020 when Lester Park was closed. The public golf program has been losing money for decades and has debt totaling $2.5 million.

Options for public golf in Duluth have been studied extensively for several years. For example, a Duluth Citizen Advisory Committee was appointed by Mayor Emily Larson from February 2018 to April 2019 to advise how to provide quality, affordable, financially sustainable public golf; to seek input from a broad swath of the community; and to draw on relevant data and best practices and expertise. To support the committee’s work, the city contracted with golf-industry consultants.

In January 2020, the Parks and Recreation Commission voted to approve a public golf committee, a subcommittee of the Parks and Recreation Commission, to make recommendations to the city administration and city council via the Parks Commission regarding public golf course operations.

These studies concluded that some publicly-accessible golf holes in the Duluth area likely need to close to bring the supply of public golf into balance with demand. The overall condition of the golf infrastructure at both Enger and Lester is poor; no significant investment has occurred in 30 years.

Duluth’s most important and difficult financial challenge has been and continues to be how to pay for periodic non-discretionary renewal of deteriorated golf assets without drawing more on the city’s limited financial resources than citizens can support or the city can afford.

Portions of Lester have significant potential for mixed-use residential development, the studies noted. In fact, in 2014, the city announced that it wanted to sell all or part of Lester Park Golf Course to developers to build middle-income housing. The city released a request for proposals to purchase all or part of Lester with a deadline of September 9. Four proposals were received.

Kate Van Daele, city public information officer, said that the city intends to preserve the original Lester Park Golf Course as protected park land and engage the community to develop a plan on how the space should be used and improved following closure of the golf facilities.

Golfing at Lester Park was one of the most enjoyable experiences of my youth. I learned a new sport and shared many fun rounds with my friends and my father, who took up golf at Lester for the first time after I began playing. Caddying was my early introduction to the world of work.

Among the many outdoor recreation opportunities in the Duluth area, golf was my favorite. I did not fish, hunt, hike, or ski. I loved being outdoors on the Lester Park course almost every day for three months each summer.

Reflecting on my memories of the Lester Park Golf Course, I have learned about its history and gained an appreciation for the course’s natural beauty that I may have taken for granted in my youth.

Like many recreational activities, golf has seen peaks and valleys in its popularity based on changes in the economy and competition from other sports. Children can choose from many more organized sports than I had available in my youth, and they often specialize in one sport, leaving less time for golf.

Golf provides many physical and mental benefits, and can be played over a lifetime. Yet a round of 18 holes can take more than four hours. The sport can be expensive for the individual; the average weekend, peak-season greens fee with cart is $50 for a public 18-hole course in the United States, according to the National Golf Foundation. Public courses can be costly for cities to maintain, particularly if fewer golfers play fewer rounds.

Unfortunately, the Lester Park Golf Course despite its beauty, rich history, and recreational benefits has become a victim of declining participation and budget deficits. But I will always remember Lester as an integral part of my youth and will maintain pleasant memories of my experiences there.