Adam Stanley/ Golf Canada
For Marlene Stewart Streit, golf, she says, is all in regards to the associates you make alongside the best way.
Streit, Canada’s first girl of golf, turns 90 on March 9. Her record of {golfing} accomplishments is lengthy and celebrated. However at the same time as she displays again on a profession properly performed, she’s extra excited in regards to the life properly lived.
“Golf, to me, is the chums you make alongside the best way and when you miss that you just’ve actually missed the boat. All of the trophies are superb. However they only sit there and tarnish,” Streit says. “You speak about tournaments and it’s actually the chums you make alongside the best way.”
Streit started her golf profession as a caddy when she was 12 at Lookout Level Golf Membership in Fonthill, Ont. and performed her first event when she was 15. It didn’t take her lengthy to seek out loads of success on the highest stage within the novice sport. She gained her first of 11 Canadian Ladies’s Newbie titles when she was simply 17.
“In these days we had an ideal subject. That was a reasonably large deal at 17. I didn’t even know what I used to be doing however I might chip and putt,” she says with fun.
A number of years later Streit would head throughout the pond to compete within the British Girls Newbie. She was a part of a Canadian squad that boarded a Douglas DC-3 airplane (“Heck, she says, “I’d by no means been additional than Winnipeg!”) and flew to Newfoundland, Iceland, Eire, after which onwards to London.
Streit would win the British Girls that yr, in 1953. Ten years later she traveled to Australia and gained the Australian Ladies’s Newbie. In 1956, she gained the U.S. Ladies’s Newbie. To this present day she is the one golfer in historical past to have gained the Canadian, Australian, British, and U.S. Ladies’s Amateurs.
In each 1951 and 1956 she gained the Northern Star Award as Canada’s athlete of the yr – up to now the one golfer to win the award greater than as soon as.
That was a “nice honour,” she says, on condition that the race for Canada’s athlete of the yr is between each women and men. However when she’d come dwelling from tournaments – usually victorious – her long-time coach Gordon McInnis would usually say that, sure, she did nice. But it surely was time to seize a shag bag and prepare for the subsequent one.
With fun, she remembers taking part in within the British Girls in 1954 making an attempt to defend her title. She thought at first 1953 can be her solely alternative to get there so she figured she higher exit and “simply win this event.” She did and returned the next yr. Streit remembers attending to the semi-finals however (sure, 70 years later) recollects lacking a brief putt and lacking out on the finals. That’s “nearly the one factor” she thinks about nonetheless from her event days, she says with fun.
Lately, Streit nonetheless performs usually. She and JoAnne Carner (aka, “Large Momma”) are long-time buddies and can tee it up in Florida collectively. Streit topped Carner on the U.S. Ladies’s Newbie in 1956 and nonetheless doesn’t let her dwell it down, though Carner says it was “only a warm-up” as she would go on to win 5 U.S. Ladies’s Amateurs herself. Streit loves watching the Canadians on the PGA Tour and Nick Taylor successful the RBC Canadian Open final summer season “was wonderful.” She loves Brooke Henderson too, after all.
She has no regrets, both.
Loads of people would surprise why she by no means turned skilled and the straightforward reply, she says, is as a result of she didn’t need to. Streit attended Rollins School, bought married, and had two daughters – Darlene and Lynn. Her exceptional life included surviving a airplane crash whereas at college. In an interview with the USGA in 2011, Streit recalled being thrown from an aisle seat to a window and spying a gap within the fuselage to scramble for a makeshift exit earlier than she walked, shoeless and thru snow, to a close-by farmhouse the place the passengers acquired assist.
Streit ended up successful nationwide titles for greater than 50 years from the 1951 Canadian Ladies’s Newbie to the 2003 USGA Senior Ladies’s Newbie. It was a particular run that cumulated in her being inducted into the World Golf Corridor of Fame in 2004 – the one Canadian participant to obtain such an honor. It means rather a lot to her, she says, if you have a look at who else has been inducted.
“I’ve had an ideal life. And I don’t have any regrets,” Streit says. “I did all of the enjoyable stuff you do in life. I had an ideal husband, I had a beautiful household, two stunning daughters […] I don’t have any regrets. Why would I need to flip professional?
“My best pleasure as an novice has been representing Canada.”
And it’s been particular for Canada to have such an ideal consultant like Marlene Stewart Streit.
Joyful ninetieth Birthday!
