Leslie Rienzie-Barry and the Rounds That Brought Her Back
For years, Leslie Rienzie-Barry viewed golf as little more than a reason for her husband and son to be gone for hours. She was perfectly happy to stay away from the game. While she occasionally joined her family on golf road trips, her interest remained more on the sidelines: shopping at her favorite department stores, long lunches, and dinner dates. The allure of the fairway was a mystery she felt no particular need to solve.
So, why did she play more than 100 rounds of golf in 2025? Because everything changed.
Amidst a diagnosis of breast cancer in 2020, and the grueling toll of chemotherapy, Rienzie-Barry tried to play a round of golf with a friend, hoping for a moment of outdoor normalcy and a chance to enjoy herself. Instead, the day became an indelible memory of physical depletion. She was dehydrated and exhausted—the moment punctuated by the chilling reality that her hair was falling out. It was a day of profound vulnerability, far removed from the joy she had hoped to find in the fresh air.
The subsequent years brought a compounding of grief that was nearly impossible to navigate. Her husband passed away in 2021, and just a year later, she lost her only child. In the face of such devastating loss, Rienzie-Barry did what many people do; she withdrew, spending her days at the cemetery questioning “why me.”
But in the quiet of her garage, she found herself staring at the golf bags left behind by the men in her life. Occasionally, she would pull out a putter and swing it at something, a small, almost absentminded tether to the two people she had lost. Eventually, she decided to step back onto the green. Her return to the game wasn’t born of a sudden love for the sport, but rather the same persistent drive that propelled her professional life.
As the founder of her own human resources consulting firm and a longtime faculty member, Rienzie-Barry’s professional life was built on navigating complex labor relations, compliance, and leadership development. Golf, she discovered, required a similar brand of focus.
She began a rigorous pursuit of the game and worked with a coach to refine her swing. The competitive streak she had carried since her high school basketball days and her decades as a Chicago Sky season ticket holder resurfaced.
Not only playing golf, she was studying the Golf Channel, hitting indoor ranges through the winter, and trading her favorite shopping trips for the local PGA store. She filled her life with the latest TaylorMade clubs, Ghost gear, and fashion-forward apparel, proving that even a new chapter could be met with style and ambition.
By the summer of 2024, Rienzie-Barry’s was playing in multiple leagues, her grief quieting down through the structure and purpose the game of golf. Each round became a point of connection, like when she went through her husband’s and son’s old golf bags. Finding their left behind items didn’t just bring tears; it brought laughter at the “telling” things they’d tucked away, like the many dollar bills—indicating there is a little rivalry in the sport. Golf was no longer separate from them; it was a way of staying connected to their memory while building a new life for herself.
In 2025, she achieved a staggering personal goal. She played 112 rounds of golf in a single season! Even hip surgery didn’t sideline her; she simply discovered the existence of handicap carts and kept moving.
Now a member of a club that offers the restaurants, sports atmosphere, and community Rienzie-Barry’s enjoys, she travels the country to play in Phoenix, Miami, and Tampa, refusing to let the journey slow down. She is very close with her two grandchildren, and they joke about the tracking app her granddaughter put on Rienzie-Barry’s phone. When they look for her she is always playing golf, or near a golf course.
Her grief has not gone away, but Rienzie-Barry has found ways to manage it. “My next chapter is wonderful, and I am so glad I’ve had the opportunity,“ she says.