By Fred Altvater
“Golf never forgets you and is always waiting for your return.”
This quote, from by Tommy Barnes in Jim Dodson’s book, “The Range Bucket List,” has never been so true as Lara Tennant’s return to golf.
Tennant has been playing golf as a young girl, but the game was never an all-consuming endeavor for her. Her father, George Mack and mother were avid golfers in Portand and the game was more like a hobby, or a family obligation, when she was young. 
She did become proficient at the game and together with her sister helped her high school team win the Oregon Girl’s Golf State Championship. It wasn’t quite that easy, however. First. she had to convince the school and a teacher to donate their time to be the girl’s golf coach, because her high school didn’t have a girl’s golf team.
Along with her sister and two other young women, in just the third year of her high school’s budding girl’s golf program, they won the state championship.
She garnered notice by Division I colleges and attended Arizona University as a member of the women’s golf team. Collegiate golf, for her, was fun and she enjoyed competing in NCAA events, but there was grandiose plans of becoming an LPGA tour professional.
Taking a job with the University of Oregon as the women’s golf coach, she met her husband and the rest they say is history.
Sometimes LIFE gets in the way of your golf, but the game is always awaiting your return.
Lara’s husband was a surgeon and soon after their wedding six kids, including a set of twins, came along in just a five-year span. A growing family will definitely curtail any golfing ambitions.
Now that her kids are grown, her youngest headed off to college last fall, she once again found a deep love for competing. Plus, she now had the time to practice and refine the skills that were still there, but had only been tucked away for over 16 years.
Once again confident enough to enter USGA senior tournaments, she won the 2018 U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur, defeating Sue Wooster to claim the title. The same pair made it though 36-hole medal play and match play brackets to meet once again in 2019 in the final match. The results were the same and Tennant won consecutive U.S. Senior Women’s Championships.
Her hectic schedule last summer included, dropping the twins off at college, then winning the U.S Senior Women’s Amateur in Cedar Rapids. She then headed home to Portland, took another child off to college, and flew to Wales in the United Kingdom to win the Women’s Senior British Amateur, as well.
Pretty good year for someone that never really took the game too seriously.
Lara Tennant is the perfect example that Golf never deserts you, it is always waiting for your return, when you are ready.
