In depth with Iron Lady Golf founder Lindsay Knowlton

Golf has seen unprecedented growth lately and much of that surge can be attributed to more women taking up the game. Toronto-based Iron Lady Golf has been at the forefront of the movement to make golf more accessible for women and help them overcome obstacles that might be holding them back. We recently spoke to Iron Lady founder Lindsay Knowlton.

Welcome Lindsay. Can you tell us a little bit about Iron Lady Golf and how it got started?

Okay. Iron Lady started, it’s 13 years now, which is really crazy to think. My journey with golf started when I was about 14 years old. I won’t tell you how long ago that was, but I really started golfing because my dad loved the game, and he needed a little friend to play with. And so that was how the game got started. I went with my dad, but I really had a crush on the guy at my golf club, so I figured he was going to be my reason to show up for golf every day in order to try to make him my boyfriend.

And following that start, I eventually got better at golf, which led me to playing competitively at Ohio State University and on the Canadian National team. That was really as far as I took it competitively. I loved the game and got so much out of it, but ended up not turning professional and going on tour at that time.

Was playing professionally a serious consideration?

Not really. After four years of college golf, I was ready to do something different. I really didn’t want to move to Florida on my own and build a life around my golf game. I wasn’t prepared to dive into that lifestyle and stress of having to make a putt to make ends meet. And I wanted to see what other options might be there for me.

So, I came back and got a job, a real job as my parents would call it, in the workforce. I started my career at TaylorMade Adidas Golf as an assistant product manager. That was my very first job, and it really wasn’t until I came home that I realized there was this huge disconnect with women and golf and it being such an intimidating sport. I remember reading an article at the time that stated that 80% of women turn down an opportunity to play golf, not because they don’t want to go, but because it’s just easier to say no to something when you’re intimidated by it than to say yes and try it and feel uncomfortable and potentially embarrassed. Golf is scary if you don’t know what you’re doing or don’t feel comfortable in that environment. I thought in the back of my mind; I need to change this.

From my mom, peers, colleagues, friends, I kept hearing that these women wanted to participate in their corporate event but never felt like they were comfortable enough to say yes to the invitation – or some wanted to have a hobby in common with their spouse in retirement but didn’t know how to play golf or how to get started. And many women struggle most of all to just find other women to play with.

I felt I needed to help more of these friends and colleagues learn to say yes to golf. And so, I was sitting in Starbucks one day and I was telling one of my best friends that I was going to do this – help more women say yes to golf. This guy at the next table had been eavesdropping, and he leaned over and said, “I love this. You need to call me. You’re onto something here. Golf is an incredible medium, but the message is so much more of what it can do and the relationships that can be built on the golf course.”

I really did not know what on earth this guy was thinking, but it turned out he was a senior VP at Manulife. I called him the next day and said, “It’s the Starbucks lady. You gave me your card.”

And he said, “Listen, I like what you said. Why don’t you come in and give a Lunch and Learn to my female employees on Bloor Street about leaning into fear and discomfort and saying yes to things that feel scary.”

And so, this wonderful guy helped me craft this Lunch and Learn talk that I delivered to this group of women at their beautiful office on Bloor. If you’ve ever seen the Manulife office, their front lawn is like a putting green. It’s perfection. At the end of the Lunch and Learn, they said, “This is great. We want to learn how to play golf.”

That was really the very first moment that I thought, okay, we are onto something. I wasn’t a golf teacher at the time, but I knew I had to figure something out because these women were coming to learn to play golf.

So, I booked some time at a local course and hired the golf pro to teach the women how to swing. I taught them etiquette and the rules and how to show up for a game and what to wear and where to park and use the bag drops and all that jazz. And at the end of the clinic, the group of women said, “Well, now what?”

That was really the beginning of Iron Lady Golf because at the time I didn’t have a “now what” – there was no program – but I realized I’d better come up with one. So, one clinic led to a series of learning clinics, then to getting on course and even going away on golf trips. That was really the start and the evolution of Iron Lady golf.

That’s incredible. How many clinics are you doing now and in how many different places?

Well, we’re primarily in southern Ontario. We have 20 league locations, which are social playing groups where women come together for 12 weeks throughout the summer, playing each week. We also have learning clinics at most of those locations as well.

We’ve got about 20 coaches at Iron Lady that are teaching everything from private lessons to group clinics, all day camps, corporate events, on-course sessions, and then of course the travel trips. Plus, we do indoor clinics and teaching in the winter. Since the beginning, over 30,000 women have come through our program and I’m really proud of that.

Of the women that participate in your beginner clinics, how many graduate to a higher level of instruction or participation?

We’ve added different levels because of exactly what you’re asking. People would come to a two hour learning clinic and then want to take their newfound skills to the course. That got us to leagues but there’s even more to it.

One of the hardest things for women who are new to golf is finding other women to play with. If you’re not a member of a private club or have an affiliation with a public course around you, what do you do? It seemed there was an opportunity to create a virtual or mobile golf community that could facilitate a relationship with the courses and also build relationships with other women.

One of the things I’ve seen that’s really stuck with me the most over time is that community and friendship are the glue that makes golf stick for women. Taking a lesson is great and it’ll help you with your technique and getting a little more confidence but really what keeps these women coming back every single week to play again is the friendships and the community that they are building with each other.

Presumably, you’re not doing all these leagues and clinics yourself. How have you dealt with that growth?

One of the most important things I did was two years ago I wrote a proposal to Golf Canada and the PGA of Canada. I said, listen, in all honesty, only 4% of golf professionals in Canada are women. And a lot of our demographic, which is new to golf, want to learn from women. It’s an emotional thing. And I said, there’s a lot of great women out there that are maybe a club champion or a teacher or retired, and they’ve got some time to give back, but they want to stay amateur. They would love to help other women learn and maybe make some money at it, but they don’t want to risk their amateur status. So, the First Tee of Canada and Iron Lady Golf both became approved programs where amateurs can teach and earn money for it.

And the way we’ve structured it is for the very entry level clinics where it is literally about showing up and etiquette and what you’re wearing, we have our amateur coaching squad leading those. And then for more advanced learning we have PGA of Canada instructors. And then to be honest with you, if people are going to the next level of coaching, we just refer them out to other PGA pros. It’s not our domain.

I also have four full-time employees who handle the administrative side of the business, operations and marketing.

What’s next for Iron Lady Golf?

So far, we’ve been mostly in Ontario but some of our corporate partners operate nationally or internationally. Trying to figure out a scalable footprint geographically is one of the next plays. We could easily do clinics in other cities for them, but the key is extending our brand to other regions and building local communities around it.

The other area of growth is adding more activities to our existing community. Every time we do something; the women tell us they want more ways to engage with each other. So, we have to figure that out and we’re constantly trying to build different programs.

We just recently launched a new program called Try Iron Lady, and we got a lot of feedback that people wanted to come in and try our community, and maybe it was a combination of our three main pillars, which are learning, playing, and connecting with each other. So, we’ve got three programs coming up where it gives people an opportunity to get some tips, play nine holes, and have some kind of a social drink afterwards. From there, a significant number will graduate to leagues and trips.

We’re also looking at other potential avenues for growth and there’s a lot of them but it’s important that we maintain the ethos of our brand. That’s number one to me. I mean, it’s my first baby. I really, really want to nurture it and the values that we have and make sure that those are sewn through every program and community that we run.

Since Covid, growth in golf has come primarily from women and kids. Current numbers suggest that about 26% of people who play golf are women, so obviously there’s room to grow, but where are they and how do you find them? Is there an untapped source that everybody’s missed so far?

One of the things that’s core to our business is our corporate clients. Much like our first clinic with the women from Manulife, we might get a phone call from, as an example, RBC or Accenture – different banks, law firms, consulting firms, insurance, etc. and they’re looking for a unique way to host their clients or have a team building event. That’s the largest opportunity for our growth this year. What’s awesome about it is that it’s one customer but we connect with a lot of women. We have one tomorrow night, and 38 women are coming. They signed up for 24 women and they called us and said, great news, we’ve got 38 coming.

So, we had to do a little quick pivot and add some coaches, but what a wonderful problem to have that so many of these women want to learn how to play golf for work.

Word of mouth is also a very powerful tool. They come to a beginner clinic with a friend. There’s power and safety in numbers.

But a really unique one that has been there ever since I started is that a lot of men or spouses of these women are actually the real champions in this. They will see Iron Lady Golf and want to support it, whether it’s for their wife, their daughter, their friend, their coworker, their colleague, whomever it might be, and they’re the ones giving them the nudge to get out there.

I think that the good thing of what we’re doing at Iron Lady is that we are helping to introduce more women to golf. And we do really, really well at the grassroots level. Now the tricky part about that is what I said to you earlier, which is 80% of women turn down a golf opportunity because it’s terrifying. So, there’s a lot of encouragement involved with getting our customers to come and even try golf or participate in a program or feel comfortable showing up. It’s an ongoing passion project to try to get and convert the naysayers into actually showing up at all.

I’ll give you a funny example. I went to a Christmas party on my street this year and all these moms came up to me and told me they were dying to learn how to play golf and they’d heard that I was the golf lady. And I said, “Yeah, I am, and I’d love to help you.” I thought it might be too much of a pull to try to get them to sign up for a program, so I said, what if we just go to the school yard next door after the kids have gone to bed one night at 7:30 and hit some wiffle balls. Bring a glass of wine and we can have some fun learning to golf. And one said, I’m in. And the next thing it’s like I’m in, I’m in, I’m in, I’m in. And I’m realizing this baby step mentality of making it social, making it fun, less intimidating, power in numbers, and we’ll get them out. So, if I can build that program that’s easy for them to get to and make it fun, then how do I continue to build those types of initiatives around the Iron Lady community that just continues to make it a place that feels safe and cozy and fun to land for them?

Are women influenced to play by the LPGA?

I think that many Canadian women have heard about Brooke Henderson and know that she’s an icon in Canadian sport, but I don’t think that women new to the game know anything about the LPGA or any other player. It’s not influencing them to play. Now, once they get into golf, they may think Nelly Korda is super cool, but there isn’t this whole hoopla around the LPGA.

If you look at the Masters on the men’s tour, it has become a social event. I put the TV out on my back deck and friends come over. It’s sort of like a tailgate party, but we haven’t built that yet around women’s golf.

Many boys and men are very influenced by pro sports in general. They watch it, their friends are all talking about it and it makes them want to play. You’re saying that’s not the same for women?

I think women are more intimidated by it. I think they would massively respect Brooke and know she’s great, but it would have no influence on them wanting to learn or try to play golf.

Throughout our discussion, you’ve referenced your daughter Penny and how being a single mom has motivated you to build Iron Lady Golf. Can you expand on that a bit?

Well, I’m having a lot of fun, and I am learning how to be a business owner and a mom. And I will say being a mom has made every part of my life better, including work because not only do I like my work more because it’s moments that I get to do something else, but I like the 4:30 boundary when I’m a mother.

Part of what motivates me every single day is Penny. So, from the moment I wake up, she’s absolutely my number one. I think that it’s obviously critical that I work to support us, but it’s also critical that I work to show her and have her be proud of me and have her maybe modeling going after something that you’re extremely passionate about.

And she sees a lot of my work. I took her to the Golf Town Ladies Night, and we scoped it out together. It’s amazing how much purpose I thought I had and then I had a baby, and it just amplified it a thousand percent in terms of loving what I do, because first of all, I have fewer hours in the day to work on Iron Lady Golf because priority #1 is being a mom.

It’s so meaningful to me to continue building this legacy that I’m proud of and one day she can be so proud of me as well, and she can see how hard I worked to build this for us.

Do you think your experience is motivating for other women to get into golf?

Well, I think that the motivating part is not just about being a single mom, it’s about being a mom and having your kids see you leaning into something that you want to try for the first time. It’s inspiring that you’re passionate about something and they’re trying new things as well.

Personally, I’m hoping that Penny loves golf and that’s something that we can do as a little family one day. Golf can be our medium to spend time together, but I also want her to see that I am extremely passionate about it, and I work hard at it both professionally and personally. I work at my golf game and practice. I think it’s inspiring and important for her to see that.

Lindsay, thanks for sharing with our readers and Happy Mother’s Day!

To learn more about Iron Lady Golf, click HERE.