Nora Dunnan is a co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Five Iron Golf, an indoor golf facility headquartered in New York City that’s on a mission to grow the game and make a previously inaccessible sport available for all. In a handful of years, Five Iron has grown to three locations in NYC and expanded to cities including Baltimore, Chicago, and Philadelphia, with spaces opening in Las Vegas, Pittsburgh, and Washington D.C. Dunnan sat down with JWS to talk about Five Iron’s efforts to open up the game and life as a female entrepreneur shaking things up in a male-dominated terrain.  

What is Five Iron Golf? 

Five Iron is an indoor golf center started in Manhattan in 2017. We have golf simulators that you can come in and practice on so you can get better at golf, improve your game, learn the game. It could be a group of friends coming in to hang out and play socially. We have golf pros who give lessons, we do leagues, we do events both corporate and private, we do kids programming and then we have a full bar, a full menu so you can eat and drink and play golf all at the same time.

We pride ourselves on being very different from standard golf. If you come inside you’ll notice right away we do not look like a country club. We have a very urban feel, a modern feel, we have neon graffiti murals on the wall. Our staff is wearing t-shirts and we try to be a really welcoming and inclusive place. We know golf can be an intimidating sport and we don’t think Five Iron is an intimidating place at all. So if you’re a brand new golfer or an experienced golfer, you know everybody can come into Five Iron and get something out of it.

So how did this all start? Where did the idea come from? How did you get involved?

So there are four of us who co-founded it back in 2017. We opened in 2017, but we started working on it in 2015. Jared, our CEO, used to take golf lessons from Mike who is one of our other founders at another small indoor place in Manhattan, and the two of them always talked about how if they built a bigger place that was open and had event space and games like pool and ping-pong and TVs and music, good food and drinks that a lot of people would show up. After just talking about it for a while, and really wanting to turn it into a reality, they brought me on board.

I knew Jared previously, not from work, just personally, and they brought me on board to sort of figure out if it would be possible and to do some research. After a couple of years of seeing over 70 pieces of real estate in Manhattan, we landed on our Flatiron location and the rest is history.

So Five Iron starts, you’re breaking into this brand new industry, you’re doing a project you couldn’t have imagined beforehand. What kind of challenges did you face as an entrepreneur and especially as a young woman starting a business in a male dominated sport?

There were a lot of logistical challenges to opening a business that no one really prepares you for. So things like codes and building inspections and getting different licenses. That was definitely something that was new for all of us, it’s almost like you don’t know what you don’t know. Obviously we learned and we figured it out, but there were definitely some scary moments along the way where we kind of wondered ‘what did we get ourselves into.’

In terms of being a female in the golf world, it’s been interesting. Honestly, a lot of times in the very beginning, people didn’t necessarily realize what role I played at the company and sometimes we’d be out and about and they’d always want to talk to the men. I know this has happened to a couple of women who have worked there. They just kind of assume that the men are in charge or that the women don’t know as much about golf.

It’s definitely a male dominated sport and I don’t think people always assumed when they met me that I was one of the co-founders. But at the end of the day, once I get into a conversation with people, they realize I know what I’m talking about.

Have you come into any challenges with people in the space, competitors who are trying to do something similar, but are a bit more traditional and maybe thinking ‘who are these new kids on the block?’

Yea there is some competition out there that wants to stay exclusive. You have to be a member, there’s an initiation fee, and we just don’t want that. We actually got advice from somebody who ran a private indoor facility in the city within the first week we opened saying we were doing it wrong because golf is not for everybody, golf is only for people who can afford it. To which we said no, we want to make it affordable and open to everybody. And that is a big part of how our mission has prevailed.

That’s not to say that those places won’t succeed, but we strongly believe that it can be for everybody based on the clientele that we have. We still have people who come in who belong to some of the most private clubs in the country, but they love coming into Five Iron because it just has a great atmosphere with great service. We’ve proven that golf does not have to be a members only sport.

That leads me to my next question, one of the mottos of Five Iron is ‘grow the game,’ what does that mean to you, to grow the game?

To us, what’s really important is getting more people exposed to Five Iron and to golf. Like I said, golf can be intimidating and golf can be a sport where people think that if they didn’t grow up belonging to a country club or something like that, they can’t play. So one of our big initiatives is to prove them wrong by showing how much fun they can have at Five Iron.

One group that for sure is underserved is women, and we’ve done a lot to get more women in. We do ladies clinics, we have partnerships with a variety of women’s golf groups, we’ll run special deals to get more women in the space and it’s worked. We co-hosted a clinic up in Chicago with Fore the Ladies and there were over 100 women there.

Golf is a sport that I think women would love to pick up, especially if they’re in a relationship with a golfer. It can be really fun to learn and play with your partner rather than have it be an activity they disappear to go play for a whole day. Instead, make it a family activity. It can be a lot of fun playing with your entire family.

We’d love to get more kids into Five Iron, we’d love to get underserved communities into Five Iron, and that’s something we actually have a dedicated employee for. One of her main focuses is the ‘grow the game’ mission and she’s working hard to find different non-profits, schools, and other organizations who are interested in using our resources to learn and enjoy golf.

I know you have been an athlete your entire life, but didn’t pick up golf until your early 20s. Do you have any advice for girls who are interested in golf and looking to break in, but might have no idea where to start?

It’s a great question because I think for a lot of women, if they’re not really close with someone in their life who plays golf, it can be hard. Like for me, my husband taught me how to play, told me where to get my first set of clubs, helped me buy my first set of clubs, gave me his old driver. You know, without that, I would have been totally lost.

But there are so many options out there that I did not know about. So for one, there are groups like Fore the Ladies and Grueter Golf. What they’re both doing is getting women into golf — some who play and some who don’t — and showing that it’s totally fine to not know what you’re doing. They host some of their clinics at Five Iron and our instructors go over everything —  basics like, here are the different clubs, here’s how you hold them, here’s what you wear to go play golf.

By finding resources out there like Fore the Ladies and Grueter Golf, you not only provide yourself with an opportunity to ask for help or get research, but you put yourself in a community with other women who are looking to do the same. You have friends who are learning the game and friends who are buying their first sets of clubs and being a part of a community makes it a lot more fun to get into a new sport.

What does the future look like for Five Iron?

We’re excited to be in new cities and we hope one day down the road there’ll be a Five Iron in every major city and smaller cities and maybe some suburban towns, too.

I think the more and more people get access to the game, whether it’s to come in and really improve or just do something fun rather than sitting at home, the better. We hope that we can keep growing and bringing the Five Iron experience to more and more communities.

Seven-time Olympic gold medalist Katie Ledecky will receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, at a White House ceremony this afternoon. 

The Team USA standout is the most decorated women’s swimmer in the sport’s history. In addition to her seven Olympic golds, she’s also won a total of 21 gold medals at the World Championships, the most of any swimmer regardless of gender. 

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The esteemed award recognizes those who have "made exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values, or security of the United States, world peace, or other significant societal, public or private endeavors," according to a White House press briefing. 

Ledecky is one of 19 medal recipients chosen by the Biden administration this year. She joins a class that spans the worlds of politics, sports, film, human rights, religion, and science. Her fellow 2024 awardees include Everything Everywhere All at Once actress Michelle Yeoh, pioneering Hispanic astronaut Dr. Ellen Ochoa, and former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, plus posthumous winners Jim Thorpe, the first Native American to win an Olympic gold medal for the US, and assassinated civil rights leader Medgar Evers. 

Olympic gymnast Simone Biles and USWNT legend Megan Rapinoe were among 2022’s class of Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients. Biles and Rapinoe were the fifth and sixth women athletes to be given the honor, making Ledecky the seventh.

After an illustrious career for both club and country, Gotham FC and U.S. Women’s National Team defender Kelley O’Hara announced today via Kelley on the Street that she will be retiring from professional soccer at the end of this year, making the 2024 NWSL season her last.

"I have always said I would play under two conditions: that I still love playing soccer, and if my body would let me do it the way I wanted to," O’Hara told Just Women’s Sports in the lead-up to her retirement announcement. "I realized a while back that I was always going to love it, so it was the physical piece that was going to be the deciding factor."

The 35-year-old will retire as a two-time World Cup champion, an Olympic gold medalist, and at least a two-time NWSL champion, depending on where Gotham finishes this season. Her legacy as a player is hard to fully encapsulate, and will forever run through some of the biggest snapshots in USWNT and NWSL history. 

In 2012, O’Hara played every minute of the USWNT’s Olympic gold medal run, after having recently converted into a defender. Her soaring goal off the bench in the 2015 World Cup semifinal is the stuff of legend. And her return from lingering injury to play in every knockout match of the national team’s 2019 World Cup win cemented a storybook international career. 

It was O’Hara who scored the overtime goal in 2021 to earn the Washington Spirit their first-ever NWSL championship, and O’Hara who returned to help see Gotham earn a title in 2023 after years spent in the trenches with the club’s previous iteration, Sky Blue. Her 15-year career spanned two professional women’s soccer leagues in the U.S. (she earned her first professional title in 2010 with WPS’s FC Gold Pride), as well as sweeping changes to the sport both on and off the pitch.

On the field, O’Hara has always been known for a motor that never quits, making the right flank her domain in attacking possession and defensive transition. In recent years, she’s also been celebrated for a competitive fire that raises the level of her teammates, whether she’s in the starting XI or supporting from the bench.

But injuries take a toll, a reality not always seen by the fans watching from home. "I've never taken anything for granted, and I feel like I've never coasted either," O’Hara said of her late-career success in the NWSL despite battling injuries. "I've always been like, 'I gotta put my best foot forward every single day I step on this field' — which is honestly probably half the reason why I'm having to retire now as opposed to getting a couple more years out of it. I've just grinded hard."

Recently, O’Hara has been sidelined at Gotham with ankle and knee injuries, and the situation motivated her to really prioritize listening to her body. "To get injured and come back, and get injured and come back, and just keep doing it, it really takes a toll on you.

"People don't see the doubt that's associated with injury,” she continued. "As athletes we feel a certain way, we perform a certain way, our body feels a certain way, we're very in tune with our bodies. And there's always so much doubt surrounding injury. It’s like, 'Can I feel the way I felt before?' The reality is sometimes you don't."

O’Hara didn’t arrive at the decision to move on from her playing career lightly. But once she began seriously considering making 2024 her final year during the last NWSL offseason, it felt right. "Once I was like, 'Alright, you know what, this will be my last year,' I have had a lot of peace with it," she said. "Truly the only thing I felt was gratitude for everything that my career has been, all the things I've been able to do and the people I've been able to do it with."

She said she’ll miss daily interactions with her teammates and all the amazing memories they’ve created, though she feels lucky to have formed relationships that go beyond sharing a locker room. "You're basically getting to hang out and just shoot the shit with your best friends every day," she reflected. "Which is so unheard of, and I just feel very lucky to do it for so long."

The Stanford graduate also mentioned that the NWSL’s suspension of regular season play in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic made her realize how much playing allowed her the space to simply be creative every day. The tactical elements of soccer provided O’Hara an outlet for problem solving and made use of her naturally competitive edge.

She’s now gearing up to channel her on-field intensity into her post-playing career full time, which is a new chapter she’s excited to begin. "I don't know if the world's ready for it, like the fact that I'm not going to be putting all of my energy into football all the time," she said with a laugh. 

O’Hara said she would like to stay connected to the game in some fashion, whether it be as an owner, coach, or member of a front office. She’s also interested in the growing media space surrounding women’s sports, having provided on-camera analysis for broadcasters like CBS Sports in addition to starting a production company with her fiancée.

"I just feel like I have a lot of passions, and things that excite me," she says. "And I do want to stay as close as I can to the game, because I feel a responsibility — and I'm not sure in what capacity — to continue to grow it."

A sense of responsibility to grow the game has been a consistent refrain for the USWNT and NWSL players of O’Hara’s era, who ushered in a new age of equal pay for the national team and collectively bargained protections for those in the league. The landscape for new players looks different than it did 14 years ago, in large part due to this pivotal generation.

"I feel an immense sense of pride around that, because I don't know if any of us knew that was gonna happen," she said. "We kind of, as things unfolded, took the next step towards changing what women's football looks like in this country and around the world.

"I'm really grateful to have been part of this era with the players that I was [with], not backing down and pushing and knowing that was the right thing to do."

Whatever the future holds, O’Hara is going ahead full throttle. It’s a piece of advice she’d also give to the next generation of professionals looking to make their own impact.

"Whatever you do in life, do it because you love it, and the chips will fall in place," she said. "If you love something, you're willing to do what it takes. You're willing to make the sacrifices, you're willing to handle the roller coaster.

"To me, it's simple. Don't do it for any other reason but that, and I think you'll be alright."

The Phoenix Mercury center spoke with Robin Roberts about her 10-month incarceration, reflecting on her poor living conditions and shaky mental state ahead of her May 7th memoir.

"The mattress had a huge blood stain on it. I had no soap, no toilet paper," Griner told the ABC News anchor in last night’s 20/20 special. "That was the moment where I just felt less than a human." 

She also detailed some of her lowest moments during that time, saying with tears in her eyes that she went so far as to consider taking her own life on more than one occasion. However, the thought of Russian officials not releasing her body back to her family made her reconsider.

"I just didn't think I could get through what I needed to get through," said Griner.

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In February 2022, Griner was arrested and charged with drug possession and smuggling by a Russian court after Sheremetyevo International Airport police found vape cartridges containing hashish oil in her luggage. The cartridges were prescribed by Griner’s doctor for chronic pain back in Arizona, where medical marijuana is legal. In the interview, the two-time Olympic gold medalist said she had a "mental lapse" while packing, and never intended to bring the cannabis products with her when she returned to play for UMMC Ekaterinburg.

"It's just so easy to have a mental lapse," Griner said. "Granted, my mental lapse was on a more grand scale. But it doesn't take away from how that can happen." 

She was later sentenced to nine years behind bars after her Russian attorneys advised her to plead guilty the following July. Griner was then sent to a remote penal colony where she was forced to spend her days cutting cloth to make military uniforms. From there, it only got worse.

"Honestly, it just had to happen," she said when asked about her decision to cut off her signature long locks. "We had spiders above my bed making nests.

"My dreads started to freeze," she added. "They would just stay wet and cold and I was getting sick. You've gotta do what you've gotta do to survive."

Shortly after Griner’s initial arrest, the U.S. State Department classified her case as wrongfully detained, escalating its urgency within the government and calling even more attention to the situation. On December 8th, she was freed in a prisoner exchange negotiated by the Biden administration.

While she told Roberts she was "thrilled" when she got the news, she was also very upset about having to leave fellow wrongful detainee Paul Whelan behind. She also continues to carry guilt about her arrest, saying "At the end of the day, it's my fault. And I let everybody down."

Griner’s memoir, Coming Home, hits shelves on May 7th.

"Coming Home begins in a land where my roots developed and is the diary of my heartaches and regrets," Griner told ABC News in an exclusive statement. "But, ultimately, the book is also a story of how my family, my faith, and the support of millions who rallied for my rescue helped me endure a nightmare."

Longtime USWNT fixture Carli Lloyd took to Instagram Wednesday morning to announce that she’s pregnant with her first child. 

"Baby Hollins coming in October 2024!" she wrote. The caption framed a collaged image of baby clothes, an ultrasound photo, and syringes indicating what she described as a "rollercoaster" fertility journey.

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In a Women’s Health story published in tandem with Lloyd’s post, the Fox Sports analyst and correspondent opened up about her struggles with infertility and the lengthy IVF treatments she kept hidden from the public eye.

"Soccer taught me how to work hard, persevere, be resilient, and never give up. I would do whatever it took to prepare, and usually when I prepared, I got results," Lloyd told Women’s Health’s Amanda Lucci. "But I found out that I didn’t know much about this world. I was very naive to think that we wouldn’t have any issues getting pregnant. And so it began."

Lloyd went on to discuss her road to pregnancy in great detail, sharing the highs and lows of the process and expressing gratitude for the care and support her family and medical team provided along the way. She rounded out the piece with a nod toward others navigating the same challenges, encouraging people to share their own pregnancy journeys, painful as they may be.

"My story is currently a happy one, but I know there are other women who are facing challenges in their pregnancy journey. I see you and I understand your pain," she said. "My hope is that more and more women will speak up about this topic, because their stories helped me. I also wish for more resources, funding, and education around fertility treatments. There is much to be done, and I hope I can play a role in helping."

The 41-year-old New Jersey native retired from professional soccer in 2021, closing out her decorated career with 316 international appearances, the second-most in USWNT history, in addition to 134 international goals. A legend on the field, Lloyd walked away from the game with two World Cups, two Olympic gold medals, and two FIFA Player of the Year awards.