Leslie Henry has not followed a typical trail on her way to the USGA. Courtesy Texas Golf Association
One of the newest members of the USGA Executive Committee also happens to have taken one of the more unusual pathways to that place in golf governance – and to the game itself.
“I trained horses and rode competitively when I was a girl,” 59-year-old Leslie Henry told GGPBiz shortly after she began a three-year term on that body. “Then, I started tennis and did that competitively through high school and college. It wasn’t until I was 35 that I began playing golf.”
The reason she made the move had more to do with work – and managing her workload as a lawyer – than a deep desire to pick up the royal and ancient game.
“I was at a firm in Houston,” recalled Henry, a litigator who largely handles toxic tort cases and divides her time between Houston and New Orleans. “And the guys there would go off to play golf. I didn’t play at the time and would stay behind and write everybody’s legal briefs while they were on the course. Even...