The Gallery
Stan Fenn & Doug Perry
ALL-TIMER: Kim Eaton stands on the edge of Colorado golf history.
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COLORADO AVIDGOLFER | July 2018
Kim for the Win… and the Record AT THIS MONTH’S CGA Women’s Senior Match Play or next month’s Senior Stroke Play, Kim Eaton could very well earn her 26th title in a CGA/CWGA championship. That would put her one ahead of fellow Colorado Hall of Famer Carol Flenniken on the victory list, making Eaton the winningest female player in Colorado golf history. Eaton tied Flenniken on May 22. In the Brassie Championship at the Club at Flying Horse in Colorado Springs, she partnered with Colorado Golf Hall of Fame member Janet Moore (who has 21 career victories herself) to overcome a seven-shot deficit in the final round and win the four-ball strokeplay event for the seventh time. The Greeley native’s other CWGA titles include four Stroke Plays, one Match Play, five Senior Stroke Plays, four Senior Match Plays, one Mashie, one Mixed, one Chapman and one Junior Match Play. On a national level, Eaton won the 2010 Women’s Trans National Golf Association Senior FourBall with Colorado Golf Hall of Famer Christie Austin and the 2016 edition of the event with partner Leigh Klasse. She won the 2016 Jones/Doherty Senior, reached the quarterfinals in the 2009, 2014 and 2016 U.S. Senior Women’s Amateurs and qualified for the 1981 and 1982 U.S. Women’s Opens. She ranks that last feat atop her list of golf accomplishments, especially since she made the cut in 1982. A close second was capturing both the CWGA Match and Stroke Play championships in the same year, 2004. A retired officer with the Evans Police Department, Eaton now splits her time between Colorado and Arizona. Since turning 50 in 2009, she has captured 16 Senior Player of the Year Awards—eight from each state. “I’ve won 15 championships since I started playing AWGA events in 2008,” Eaton reflects. “It took me more than 40 years get to 25 in Colorado.” During those early Colorado years, Eaton, a precocious junior player, remembers not being allowed to play in the Greeley Ladies Invitational because she wasn’t yet 18—a very unpopular decision among the prominent women players of the day. They closed ranks and refused to play unless Eaton could compete. “I had more mothers than I knew what to do with,” she says. Among them was Carol Flenniken—the woman whose record she recently tied. “I’ve played on and off with Carol since I was 16,” Eaton says. “She’s a legend—and I’m proud to say that she and I have both won 15 individual and 10 partner events.” One more victory of either type will break the tie and further the legend of Kim Eaton. coloradowomensgolf.org
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