Marlene Streit
2015 Honoree
This year’s honoree is Marlene Streit. She was born in Cereal, Alberta, Canada and graduated from Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla. In 1947 she began caddying and started to play golf in 1949; she was taught to play and coached her entire career by Golf Professional Gordon McInnis, Sr.
An outstanding golfer, she is the only woman in history to have won the British Ladies’ Amateur, USGA Women’s Amateur, Australian Women’s Amateur and the USGA Senior Women’s Amateur (3 times.) Other victories include winning the North/South Championship twice; a 4-time Helen Lee Doherty Champion; a 7-time Doherty Senior Division Champion; Women’s International Four-Ball Championship twice, the first time in 1956 with Ann Casey Johnston (who was the 1960 and 1961 WWGA Amateur Champion) and then again – 40 years later when she won in 2003 with partner Carol Semple Thompson (also a “Woman of Distinction” honoree.)
In Canada she is regarded as the most successful Canadian Amateur having won 24 Canadian Ladies’ Golf Association championships which include: 11 Amateurs, 9 Close and 4 Seniors. She also won copious Ontario Ladies Golf Championship starting in 1951 through 2003 that included Junior, Amateur and Senior Championships.
Streit won a total of 30 national or international amateur championships with at least one championship in each decade and has the distinct honor of winning on three different continents outside of Canada. In her home country of Canada she claims 24 wins; United States four wins and one each in Great Britain and Australia. She has “Honorary Life Memberships” in 16 Canadian golf clubs; outside of Canada has one in Wales and three in United States clubs.
Her awards are numerous including the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame, Canada Sports Hall of Fame, Rollins College Sports Hall of Fame, Canadian Woman of the Year and the first Canadian to be inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame.
A true champion both on and off the golf course, she has been a friend of the Women’s Western Golf Association for many, many years. The “Marlene Streit Awards Fund” provides only travel expenses to outstanding junior girl golfers from Ontario. These young ladies have traveled to the top Junior competitions outside of Canada for years including countless Women’s Western Junior tournaments.