Though he was born in Washington, D.C., where his father, Steve, served as a public-relations specialist for Kemper Insurance, Josh Lesnik is as Chicago as they come, having lived in and around the Windy City for most of his life. Now 54, he has known triumph and despair with his Cubs and savored the great run of the Bulls when Michael Jordan was leading them to their NBA titles in the 1990s. Ask him to name his dream golf foursome and Lesnik not only lists the players he’d like (musicians Jerry Garcia and Bob Marley and Golden Age course architect Seth Raynor) but also the four Chicago icons whom he would ask to join the group in other capacities, with longtime Cubs broadcaster Harry Caray and actor/comedian Chris Farley driving the beverage cart, John Belushi fixing drinks at the 19th hole and former Bulls head coach Phil Jackson caddying.
Lesnik’s life is also deeply rooted in the royal and ancient game. Now the executive vice president for golf at Kemper Sports, a Chicago-based concern co-founded by his father in 1983, he has been working in the sport for most of his adult life. Lesnik’s first gig of note was as the initial general manager of Bandon Dunes, when he was just 29 years old. And after helping Mike Keiser establish that property, Lesnik assisted the one-time greeting card magnate in creating other acclaimed layouts and the destinations they became part of, among them Pacific Dunes, Bandon Trails and Old Macdonald in Oregon as well as Sand Valley and Mammoth Dunes in Wisconsin. He also helped the Mosaic company with the development and opening of the Red, Blue and Black courses at Streamsong in Florida. In addition, Lesnik was the one who brought Keiser to the Cabot Links project on Cape Breton – and whom Keiser sent on his behalf for a first look at the spectacular sandy-soil property that became Sand Valley.
No one save Keiser himself has been so directly engaged in the development of so many top-100 courses.
Lesnik is not one to crow about any of his work experiences. But he has no trouble talking about “how cool it was to be involved in different ways with the creation of all those different courses†and how much he learned about business working so closely for so many years with Keiser. His father, too, whose firm has managed at one time or another all those esteemed properties. And this past January, the company's new financial partners purchased the entire Streamsong resort for $160 million, with Kemper staying on to run it.
And Lesnik’s involvement in the game extends to other areas. He sits on the Boards of Governors of the Western Golf Association/Evans Scholars Foundation as well as the First Tee of Greater Chicago and Canal Shores. He is also on the regional affairs committee of the USGA and a course rater for Golfweek magazine.
In the latest installment of the 19th Hole, Lesnik talks with John Steinbreder about learning to play the game with his dad at a nine-hole muni called Vernon Hills that was the first facility Kemper Sports ever managed for a client, and how the job he took at that company at age 16 largely entailed cleaning bathrooms, bussing tables and picking the practice range. Now a father of two adult sons (Jake and Henry) and a 12-year-old hockey-playing daughter (Bebe), Lesnik also discusses his passion for music in general and the Grateful Dead in particular, the very positive trends he sees in golf today and the things he likes most about the game.
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