This trailblazing coach is bringing golf and its life lessons to Fort Worth’s south side
Kennedi Lee describes the sound when the face of her golf club makes perfect contact with the ball. It’s addicting, she says.
At golf competitions Lee notices the other golfers and spectators don’t look like her, but she has learned to tune out the noise and put smile on her face. She knows, even as a Black woman, she is just as talented and deserves to be respected like anyone else on the course.
These principles were ingrained when she and her father met Gladys Lee, or “Coach Lee” as she’s known, at an LGPA event when she was 11. She enrolled in Lee’s LPGA*USGA Girls Golf program, which provides friendly environments for girls to learn the game of golf.
Gladys Lee grew up in Fort Worth and graduated from IM Terrell High School. For nearly four decades, she has connected many young people of color to the sport, explaining the finances and sharing the resources needed to reach the next level.
“Golf was my talent and the tool that I was given to make a difference,” Gladys Lee said. ”That’s what golf has done for me, and I know it’ll do for others.”
As her son, Byron Robinson says, Gladys Lee has fought to bring equality and equity to a sport that lacks representation by women and people of color.
“Golf is a lot more than just hitting a ball,” Robinson said. “Golf will teach you about life.”
Kennedi Lee took the skills she learned to Mansfield Lake Ridge, where she carried them to Division I North Carolina A&T. The lessons she learned from Coach Lee, she said, will carry on for the rest of her life.
“Her coaching and her program is the foundation of my career,” said Lee, 21, who is a senior. “So I have a lot of gratitude for her as a coach and what her program has done for me.”
Gladys Lee is bringing her nonprofit junior golf program, The Roaring Lambs International Junior Golf Academy, to the Morningside neighborhood. An office will be set up at New Mount Rose Missionary Baptist Church, 2864 Mississippi Ave. She had been running her administration duties from her home and paid for separate storage of golf equipment.
‘Golf is more than just a game.’
In 1986, Gladys Lee spent her time going back and forth between Texas and California as she worked for Dick Clark’s “American Bandstand,” a popular music television show.
Her coworkers would play golf while she stayed in her hotel room. Carrie Clark, Dick’s wife, suggested Gladys Lee to take up golf. “Golf is more than just a game,” she told the woman from Fort Worth.
At first, Gladys Lee despised the idea of golf: hitting the ball, looking for it and dropping it into a hole.
Then she heard the sound of the metal club smacking a golf ball and adrenaline rushed through her body. She was determined to get better. When she came back to Texas she joined a few country clubs to learn and build her passion.
While volunteering at junior tournament, she noticed something.
“Where are the Black and brown kids?” she said.
When she asked Fort Worth’s mayor of the time, Bob Bolen, why there was this discrepancy, the mayor acknowledged that certain groups of people didn’t have accessibility to golf courses nor the encouragement to learn the sport.
If she wanted to do something, she said Bolen told her, she would have to do it herself.
This was Lee’s signal to establish Texas International Stroker’s Junior Golf Association, which she later named in 1997 The Roaring Lambs International Junior Golf Academy. She borrowed the name from Bob Briner’s book, “Roaring Lambs: A Gentle Plan to Radically Change Your World.” It advocates people to be “roaring lambs” to use their platforms as a vehicle of social change.
For Lee, she was a roaring lamb through golf.
‘Hello world’ at the Country Club
Golf has long served as a country club sport that at one time barred African-Americans from participation.
The first golf course to desegregate in the South was Austin’s Lions Municipal Golf Course in 1950, when city council members allowed two young African-Americans to play on the course. In 1955, a landmark case, Holmes vs. City of Atlanta, argued for the end of segregation on Atlanta’s public golf courses. It cited the 1954 Board vs. Board of Education ruling which overturned the “separate but equal” doctrine used to segregate public schools.
In 1961, the PGA of America ended its “Caucasian-only clause” and allowed non-white players in professional competitions. Three years later Pete Brown won the Waco Turner Open to become the first African-American player to win a PGA-sanctioned event.
This paved the way for golfers like Tiger Woods, who became a professional in 1996. In the same year he released his “Hello World” Nike commercial, stating: “There are still courses in the U.S. I am not allowed to play because of the color of my skin.” The next year he became the first African-American to win the Masters.
In 1997, nonprofit organizations such as First Tee sprang up across the country to make golf more accessible to children and to use the sport to build character and life skills.
As of January, 5.2% percent of the 30,082 PGA professionals were women, 2% identified as Hispanic and Latino and 0.08% identified as African-American, according to the PGA.
“We’ve always had programs for our youth, but we just did not have representation or a platform to showcase that they were there,” Gladys Lee said.
3 programs at Roaring Lambs
The Roaring Lambs International Junior Golf Academy provides three programs: PGA Jr. Golf League, LPGA USGA Girls Golf and LPGA Golf 101. In each one, Lee provides training, instruction and initiatives to help participants.
The new office at New Mount Rose Missionary Baptist Church will provide classes and instruction, but, as Lee says, there still needs to be places to practice in Fort Worth.
There are 20 golf courses in Fort Worth: six public, four municipal and 10 private. All require a fee to play. Without the resources and accessibility it is difficult for children to compete at the next level.
Right now, the chidlren in her program practice at Irving Golf Club, 2000 E. Shady Grove Road.
State Rep. Ramon Romero Jr., a Democrat from Fort Worth, remembers when the old Sycamore Creek Golf Course, at 401 Martin Luther King Jr. Freeway, was the place many Black people in the area used to play.
It is also where he learned how to play golf himself. The course closed in 2019. The city is using a $1.5 million grant to turn the 92-acre site into an extension of Sycamore Community Park.
Romero says courses like Sycamore Park need investments for maintenance to encourage people to play there.
Golf already has an intimidation factor as it is considered a “rich man’s game,” Romero said. Golf’s accessibility can spread, he said, if parks and schools promote the sport and allow students to play for free or a small price.
“I just think number one that cities all over our state should understand the value of the lessons that happen in golf,” Romero said. “Then open up their existing facilities and do what they can to encourage schools or anyone that has a captive audience, like school districts, to say ‘Hey, this door is open. Come, bring your kids here, and they have an open door. That’s just not the case.”
Kennedi Lee says the reason why many people don’t get into the sport is because of a lack of representation and people think they don’t belong.
“Programs, like Coach Lee’s, where they are inviting children from these underrepresented areas and communities to play this sport is important,” Kennedi Lee said. “So they’re not under this impression that they can’t play it or exceed in the sport.”
In 2003, Gladys Lee was inducted into the The National Black Golf Hall of Fame and in February she will be inducted in the Texas Black Sports Hall of Fame. She will serve as the Grand Marshall for the 2025 MLK Holiday Parade in Fort Worth in January.
While others have become rich from the sport, Gladys Lee has used it to steer young men and women in the right direction to succeed.
“Some people go into it because there are billions of dollars there, but I didn’t get rich,” Lee said. “It’s my passion and my love and I tell everybody, it’s my ministry, what I was anointed to do, this is my purpose.”
She will began her program at New Mount Rose Missionary Baptist Church in January. Her program is open to everyone. To sign up, email Lee at coach.leelpgapro@gmail.com.
