By Chris Michlewicz; photo courtesy of Leslie Ludolph

Leslie Ludolph looked forward to golfing on the lush, hallowed grounds of Pinehurst golf course in North Carolina last year. Like many others, her trip to the regular PGA Tour stop was canceled due to the coronavirus, but the plans are only temporarily on pause.

Ludolph and her husband, Doug, came to Castle Pines in 1997 with their two sons, Jack and Kevin, and joined The Country Club at Castle Pines the day they bought their home. Since then, she’s become an avid golfer, playing as often as possible.

“A happy day is anything in the 90s for me,” she said, referring to her total score on an 18-hole course.

Ludolph currently serves on the Country Club’s long range planning committee and is a member of the Castle Pines Women’s Golf Association. The game is such a big part of her life that the family’s dogs were named “Bogey” and “Palmer,” the latter named for the late golf legend Arnold Palmer.

When she’s not hitting the links, Ludolph can be found helping facilitate the path to recovery for abused children as assistant director at SungateKids (see related article on page 15). As a couple, the Ludolphs like to travel and have a “soft spot” for Italy. She and Doug are particularly drawn to Florence because of its art, architecture and rich history. Italy’s food and wine evoke a taste of their previous home near California’s wine country.

“We were kind of weaned on California wine in our young years,” she said.

Ludolph is understandably disappointed about the cancellation of her and Doug’s trip to Pinehurst golf resort, but points out that the courses there “aren’t going away.” Like many frequent travelers, she is curious about how her 2021 vacation plans might be affected by the pandemic, and whether travel in general will be different going forward. She misses her winter excursions to friends’ houses in California and Arizona to get out of the cold and snow, and visits from those friends during the hot summer months in their home states.

Committed to being mostly at home in the coming months, Ludolph has trained her focus on remodeling projects, including the addition of a wine cellar, while Doug finishes his work as a project executive on SoFi Stadium, the new shared home for the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams and Los Angeles Chargers.

Ludolph’s professional background includes a stint as a speech pathologist at Buffalo Ridge Elementary and an internship at a Veterans Affairs hospital in San Francisco, where she learned more World War II history from her patients than she could have from any history book, she said.

“I heard a lot of firsthand stories that were really fascinating to me” she recalled.

In her free time, Ludolph is a dog-sitter for her son’s field spaniel, “Palmer,” and has recently enjoyed watching videos of her grandsons, Austin and Parker, taking horseback riding lessons. She also enjoys attending Denver Broncos games, cooking for friends and family, and, of course, working on her golf game.