Streit's road to Hall remarkable
By KEN FIDLIN -- Toronto Sun
When Marlene Stewart Streit won the 1994 United States Senior Women's Open at the age of 60, 38 years after her first U.S. Amateur title, it became the longest such span in USGA history.
It was a remarkable achievement, but records are made to be broken and, nearly a decade later, in 2003, somebody broke that one.
It was Marlene herself. In the boiling Texas heat last summer, the 69-year-old Canadian icon outlasted her competition in a 47-hole marathon -- 24 in the morning semi-final, 23 in the afternoon final -- to take back the title she had won nine years previous.
At 69 years, six months and two days old, Streit became the oldest person to win a USGA championship, an astounding 47 years after she won the U.S. Women's Amateur in 1956.
"I always tell the young kids, you can't get tired until it's over," she said that day. "You can't get tired while you're doing it, so I just tried to tell myself that. I could have gone as many holes as it would have taken."
That last sentence embodies the powerful competitive spirit that has won Streit a place in the prestigious International Golf Hall of Fame at St. Augustine, Fla., the first Canadian to be so honoured. PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem, who doubles as chairman of the World Golf Foundation, made the announcement yesterday at the PGA Legends tournament in Savannah, Ga.
Streit, a lifelong amateur, will be inducted on Nov. 15 along with professional stars Tom Kite, Isao Aoki and Charlie Sifford.
'SO VERY PROUD'
"I'm so very proud," Streit said. "It's a great honour for Canada and to be the first Canadian is overwhelming. There are only 100 people in the Hall, now 104, and that's not very many, so it means a great deal to have my name in there among that number."
The highlights of her career in golf would fill a whole page by themselves. She has won virtually every amateur title available, including the U.S., the British, the Canadian and the Australian.
Because of her many successes in the United States, playing against all the top players, it is conceded that if she had chosen to turn pro, she would have been a household name wherever golf is played. Instead she chose to be a big name in her own household, a full-time wife and mom to husband John Streit and daughters Darlene and Lynn.
She continued to play all the big amateur events -- winning 34 events in a row during one stretch.
Marlene was born in Alberta but moved to Ontario at the age of seven, when her dad, Harold Stewart, an electrician, was offered a wartime job in the Niagara peninsula town of Fonthill.
Lookout Point Golf Club, some five kilometres away, became her home away from home. She caddied for $1 a round and when she had earned enough, she bought herself a membership and a set of clubs. Even before that, though, club pro Gordon McInnis had recognized an affinity for the game and began coaching Marlene.
She improved quickly and by the age of 17, in 1951, she won the Ontario junior title, then shocked the golf community by taking both the closed and open Canadian Ladies Golf Association amateur titles that same year.
Barely five feet tall and entirely without vanity, agreeable and pleasant as could be off the course, Marlene was a tigress in competition. It was, and still is, her intensity that sets her apart.
"There are a lot of players who played as well as I," she said. "But I don't think they had the grit and determination I had to finish the match."
In that memorable summer of 1956, Marlene won eight tournaments, including the U.S. Amateur in a dramatic come-from-behind effort over future LPGA star and Hall of Famer Joanne Carner.
After 20 holes of the 36-hole match play final, Streit was down four holes to Carner but she battled back to take the lead by the 32nd hole. She won it with a 12-foot putt on the 35th hole.
NO REGRETS
"If she had turned pro, Marlene would have needed a truck to take her money to the bank. I've never seen a more competitive golfer," Carner said a few years ago.
Streit has never once expressed a word of regret for her chosen path in life.
"I'm not sorry I didn't turn pro," she told a reporter several years ago. "I don't look back and say, 'Gosh, if I'd turned pro, what would I have done?' I know what I would have done. I would have been great out there."
And now it's official. She is what we all knew she was all along: A Hall of Famer.
