GREENBLATT HONORED

By Jim Bebbington

In 2019, Molly Greenblatt, a Denver attorney and very busy person, was willing to step up and lead the board of a golf organization she thought was doing good and could do even better.

Greenblatt agreed to serve one two-year term as the chair of the board of the Colorado Open Golf Foundation. The Foundation puts on the three Inspirato Colorado Opens (men’s, women’s and senior), and it raises funds to support the First Tee youth golf program at Green Valley Ranch Golf Club.

“I have this idea that philanthropy should be part of your life - time, blood, sweat, tears, money,” Greenblatt said recently from her downtown office. “Frankly it makes me feel whole - I feel I have an obligation to give back. I have a wonderful father and I had a wonderful mother who emphasized leaving the world better than you find it.”

It was 2019 and she had big goals for her term - among them looking into whether they could bring pay-equity to at least the winning share of both the men’s and women’s opens.

Then Covid hit and in the spring of 2020, it would take all the blood, sweat and time that Greenblatt could muster. The group’s board and staff decided to try to follow evolving medical guidelines and still hold the 2020 tournaments.

As a volunteer chair, she was not obligated to dive in so deep. But she was on calls and video conferences throughout the spring with doctors and partners in the tournaments, looking for ways to safely hold these events.

“We pulled it off with a bang,” she said. “We were able to lure back LPGA players because we were one of the only ones putting on a tournament that spring. Not only could we do it but we communicated that there was joy to be had during this time. It took a lot of minds and motivated people.”

It was May 2020. The game of golf - outdoors in fresh air with participants capable of being apart from one another while still competing - was only just emerging as one of the few ‘normal’ activities that people could safely do during the hard Covid-quarantine. Golf’s fate was still far from clear.

“We were in a lot of Zoom meetings and I was calling doctors left and right,” Greenblatt said. “That was an extraordinary example of a board coming together with a team coming together and figuring out how to make it work.”

Greenblatt is the 2023 recipient of the Robert

M. Kirchner Award, given by the Colorado Open Golf Foundation to “an individual for outstanding contributions to the game of golf in the state of Colorado.” Her terms - she ended up serving two - as the head of the Colorado Open Golf Foundation board saw the organization continue to raise funds, hold its three annual tournaments, then use the funds to operate the robust First Tee program at Green Valley Ranch Golf Club.

Kelly Reidy, a volunteer board member for the First Tee who also runs her family’s company, Reidy Metal Services, said Greenblatt was the right person to help the organization survive turbulent times.

“She is just amazing,” she said. “She can take on just any challenge and make it her own and take care of it.”

Greenblatt grew up locally, and as a teenager was introduced to the game by her father Phill. “I thought it was an old man’s sport,” she said.

Later, at Cherry Creek High School, she gravitated away from softball and found herself on the golf team. Success followed. She went on to play at San Jose State University in college, then served as assistant coach at the University of Illinois women’s team for one year as she began law school there.

She switched to the University of Denver to finish her law degree, began her practice, and struggled as many young professionals do to find much time to keep the game part of her life. Now, with a busy practice in medical malpractice law with the firm Leventhal, Puga Braley

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