Maryland's Schlesinger Making Up For Lost Time

By Andrew Blair

Hot Springs, Va. – As a teenager, Lisa Schlesinger pretty much had relegated golf to the category of a sport she least likely would play.

Sure, she dabbled every once in a while at Norbeck Country Club, but couldn’t sustain the interest, nor the calm the game rewards, to carve out any sustainable success.

“My parents tried to get me to play when I was 14 or 15 years old, but when I hit a bad shot, I cried all the time, so I just knew it wasn’t the game for me,” said Schlesinger at the 2009 USGA Senior Women’s Amateur, where she fell in the second round of match play to Teresa Cleland of Syracuse, N.Y., on Tuesday.

Lisa Schlesinger has always had a competitive fire, but now she fuels that desire on the golf course. (Fred Vuich/USGA)

Instead, as a youngster growing up in Kensington, Md., her true interest was derived from team-oriented athletics. A multi-sport athlete at Walter Johnson High School, Schlesinger was a basketball standout who frustrated opponents by combining an uncommon will to win with an unselfish, team-first playing style. As a point guard, she earned athlete of the year accolades in 1975.

Golf? Huh. Schlesinger was more likely to twirl a baton with the dance team.  

She went on to play basketball at the University of Maryland and in the Women’s Basketball League. Later, the driven Schlesinger played high-level fast-pitch softball for the Washington Metros for 15 years. In 1985, she won the National Amateur Weightlifting Championship in the 135-pound weight class in the bench press.

But then in her mid-30s, she decided her body had taken on enough wear and tear from the physicality of team sports. With her competitive fires still burning, following a three-decade hiatus from the sport, Schlesinger found an outlet in golf. Delving into the game with the same commitment she applied to all other areas of her life, Schlesinger admits that the decision to take up golf was life-enhancing. She’d gone from a person hoping to bring attention to others to a sport where the final decision and resulting outcome rested all on one person’s shoulders: hers.

“In golf, it’s just you,” Schlesinger says. “There’s nowhere to hide. I’ve enjoyed growing from it. It’s made me grow as a person by having to rely just on myself. Once you play, you get hooked.”

Last summer she won her third Women’s District of Columbia Golf Association title, besting fellow USGA Senior Women’s Amateur participant Shelley Savage (Alexandria), 2 and 1, in the deciding match. Schlesinger also won the inaugural Maryland Mid-Amateur (ages 25 and over) last spring and was medalist in U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur sectional qualifying.

These days, Schlesinger, 51, is shooting for the stars. She earned a place in the Senior Women’s Amateur field through sectional qualifying, advanced to match play and won her first match in a national championship before being eliminated by the 16th-seeded Cleland.

Her goals down the road?

“Win, win and more winning,” says Schlesinger, who today plays at Norbeck Country Club and represented Maryland at the recent USGA Women’s State Team Championship at Sycamore Hills Golf Club in Fort Wayne, Ind. “Winning brings you back for more. Anything I dive into, I go into it head-first and I don’t come up until I’ve won. I love to compete and test myself; this is a great game to do that.

“I like to test myself at this level, because these players are the best at this level.”

She’s also used the game as an avenue to lend a helping hand to others. Last year, she launched the Swing 4 Schlesinger Benefit Golf Tournament in honor of her brother, David, who was paralyzed in November 2008 after suffering a ruptured disc; the inaugural event raised more than $65,000.

One of her most memorable personal highlights in the game was earning a berth in the 2006 Bob Hope Chrysler Pro-Am. Practicing next to the likes of Davis Love III, Fred Funk and Phil Mickelson “was one of the most fabulous experiences in my life,” she admits.

Near the top of her game, Schlesinger wants to make sure competing in that event isn’t the endgame as far as her accomplishments.

“The only thing that is going to top that,” she says, “is winning a USGA championship. That’s what I want.”

Andrew Blair is communications director for the Virginia State Golf Association. E-mail him with questions or comments at ablair@vsga.org.