A Golf Family Affair

The Smiths of Detroit Lakes are helping build a Minnesota golf legacy in that far corner of the state.

Minnesota

Introducing your child to sports can be tricky—hover too closely or passionately in support of their (or your) athletic dreams, and you might be called a tiger mom, hockey dad or helicopter parent. Kris Smith, assistant girls golf coach at Detroit Lakes High School, runs several successful junior golf clinics with his wife Margery at Lakeview Golf Course each summer and has seen these kinds of parents in flight. He, too, is a passionate sports parent, but took a different approach to teaching golf to his two children—one of whom is a Top 30 amateur in the country and reigning Big Ten Individual Champion Kate Smith.

“My wife and I have always wanted to make sure [Karter and Kate] are good kids,” he says. “We don’t want to be called helicopter parents. When we teach junior golf, we see a lot of that. The best thing about golf to me is self-discovery—when a young man or young woman can go out there and play and figure it out on their own. Improvement comes so quickly when they have an open mind and don’t clutter it with swing technique.”

Early in his own golf career, Kris witnessed a sports-parent road he didn’t want to go down, even though that road ended at the pinnacle of the game. An Atlanta native, Kris took up golf after his team sports competing days ended with college graduation. He eventually became an assistant pro at Long Beach Navy Golf Course in Southern California.

“Tiger Woods was 10 or 11 years old, and he played our executive course, and his dad, Earl, came in and pounded the counter about how Tiger should be able to play the big course—but he wasn’t of age yet,” says Kris, who acknowledges other access obstacles Tiger faced early in his career. “Tiger probably could’ve beaten everybody, but we had rules. I respect Earl Woods; no doubt about it. But some of it was over the top. For me, I just wanted to raise two great kids, and golf was a vehicle for that.”

Kris and Margery employed an “immersion method” for getting their children into the game. After spending time as a head professional in Connecticut (where he won two section championships and played twice in the Greater Hartford Open), Kris brought his young family to Minnesota and bought (the now defunct) Ironman Golf Course in Detroit Lakes. While not everyone can buy their kids a golf course, they sure make for a nice playground.

“I cannot emphasize enough how fortunate we all were that they had a golf course in their backyard to play on,” Kris says. “It wasn’t Windsong, Hazeltine or Interlachen, it was Ironman. It kept our perspective. We started them early with all the chores that you would think of. They loved the golf course; they loved participating. It was just a joy to raise my kids in Detroit Lakes at Ironman.”

Karter, who is three years Kate’s senior, made the first foray into playing the sport, and a reluctant Kate, who just wanted to hang out with her brother, followed.

“My brother was so good at a young age,” Kate says. “I tagged along because I liked my brother, I liked being outside. It worked out in the end. But at a young age, golf was just an activity for me.”

Even though her folks had Kate playing around age four (and in her first small tournament at age five) the golf bug did not bite her immediately. But Ironman provided fertile ground for a fledgling career.

“Ironman was unique,” Kris says. “At the time, it was an 18-hole par-3 course with an 18-hole natural turf putting course. They would go out and be creative, hitting shots on the par-3 and chipping around the putting course.”

Kris (a PGA Quarter Century and Life Member who in 2008 was named a Master Kids Coach by U.S. Kids Golf) is an advocate for learning the game backwards, starting with the short game and working your way back to the tees. This method promoted some early success for his kids and cultivated a deep interest in the game. As Kate’s success grew, so did her budding passion.

“Probably when I was 9 or 10,” Kate says, reflecting on when the game started to take hold. “That whole ‘let’s try to break 90, 80, then 70,’ I found that so fun, trying to post a score and see what I could do. It just became more and more fun the better I got, the more competitive it was. When I was 8 or 9, I was like the only girl in my division. When you got into 9, 10, 11, you could compete with more girls in the area and that competition was really exciting.”

Kate competed with boys, as well—specifically her brother and his friends. She started on the forward tees, but it wasn’t long before she teed it up next to them.

“At the beginning, I struggled,” she says. “But I didn’t want to [hold] them up. So, the less strokes I took, I knew that was better. By the end, I could shoot better scores than some guys in the group. That was exciting to be able to just keep up with them from their tees. It made me feel like I belonged in that group.”

Karter put together a nice high school career, finishing second at state twice and then playing at Drake for four years. According to his dad, who admits his bias, Karter was one of the best high school golfers coming out of Detroit Lakes—a place that claims two boys team state titles (one featuring Minnesota Viking Adam Thielen). But then Kate came along, and the golf mecca of “DL” had another star. And nobody has enjoyed it more than big brother Karter.

“We joke constantly that [Kate’s golf] is such a family project,” Kris says. “It’s something that Karter has been so instrumental in. He has reveled in her success. He’s just her biggest fan.”

The “family project” has been quite successful. As most local prep golf fans know, Kate is a five-time consecutive Minnesota State Individual champion (albeit co-champ three times), and that moniker has stuck with her—despite playing in the NCAA’s her freshman year at Nebraska and this past spring temporarily leading the Augusta National Women’s Amateur (with Karter on the bag), winning the Big Ten Individual title and competing at the NCAA regional tournament with her teammates. Still, she looks back at those hard-fought state tournament contests (sinking a putt on the final hole of her high school career for one of those co-championships) as good preparation for what has followed: which included two MGA Women’s Amateur Championships, 2017 and 2020, and the 2020 MGA Women’s Co-Player of the Year. 

“The last high school tournament, the night before the last round I barely slept,” she says. “I had a roommate. I was just in the bathroom, up all night. Whereas I just played in the Augusta Am and the Big Ten and I slept like a baby the night before. I went through a lot of those big competitive moments at the state tournament, which was cool—and it’s cool that we had such a competitive team at the time, too.”

Her DL Laker teams won four girls state team titles (out of six total since 2012), and “team” has always meant a lot to Kate. She returned to Nebraska as a fifth-year senior with the expressed purpose of making the NCAA tournament with her teammates.

“I always wanted to go to the regionals with the team, and I felt a little bit unfinished in my college career,” Kate said a week before regionals. “To be able to do that is really special, and we are all just so excited. We made it. The program is in a really good spot.”

The past spring, Kate graduated with a degree in graphic design and was named honorable-mention All-American by the Women’s Golf Coaches Association. This summer, she’ll play in the Arnold Palmer Cup Team as an amateur, turning pro afterward. Her game plan is the same as always: “I’m going to work as hard as I can to set myself up for success. I’ve got to bet on myself; that’s the only way it works.”

Before then, however, she will be back in DL, just like every summer, to help her mom (who is the chief organizer and operator) and dad with the clinics—particularly Kate’s Club, which her parents formed when she was five years old to find her some girls to play golf with.

“That one is really special, just seeing all the girls,” Kate says. “We’ve been up to 50, 60 girls a week.”

But Kate offers some advice to those young girls (and their parents), whom she occasionally hears saying they want to play golf in college or professionally someday. 

“I would rather see them have fun and enjoy the game and not worrying about a scholarship when they’re 10 years old,” Kate says. “I don’t think I had those aspirations at that age. I just wanted to be as good as my brother or his friends. I didn’t really think about it very far [ahead]. It’s just cool seeing women at any age having opportunities and being able to go play together at a golf course.”