Still The Most Fantastic Flenniken

HALL OF FAME quarterback Bart Starr had a solid year back in 1964, leading the Green Bay Packers in the runup to what would become a record-setting five NFL and Super Bowl titles under Vince Lombardi. The season was good enough to earn honorable mention in the media voting for Wisconsin Athlete of the Year—an award that went to a feisty, 5-foot, 3-inch golfer named Carol (née Sorenson) Flenniken.

“Little ol’ me,” laughs Flenniken, now 77 and a Colorado resident for roughly the past 50 years. It is hard to imagine what 21-year-old Flenniken accomplished on her first trip abroad in that fall of 1964; let’s just call it the “Sorenson Slam.” First, she scored the clinching point in the U.S. team’s Curtis Cup win over Great Britain and Ireland at Royal Porthcawl Golf Club in South Wales. Next, she became the youngest player to win the British Ladies Amateur (now called the Women’s Amateur) at Royal St. Georges in Sandwich, England, going 37 holes in the final match.

From there she crossed the channel to score medalist honors in the inaugural Women’s World Amateur Team Championship outside of Paris, where she tied at 294 with World Golf Hall of Famer Catherine Lacoste (hailing from the crocodile family dynasty, three years later she would win the U.S. Women’s Open as an amateur). Back on home soil, Flenniken had won the prestigious Trans-Mississippi title earlier that summer to round out the Slam.

“She was the absolute best with long irons,” says Lynn Zmistowski, a nationally ranked Minnesota amateur who had befriended Flenniken before they both ended up in Colorado—and in the Colorado Golf of Fame. “If you can hit your 2-iron perfect, hitting the rest of the clubs is pretty easy. She could stick it, all the time, every hole, 5 or 10 feet.”

Today, that track record would tee up any golfer for a lucrative career on the LPGA tour. “I thought about it,” Flenniken says. “I think I could have made it out there.”

But this was a different era; she didn’t want the travel or the lifestyle, and the purses were paltry. The total payout for U.S. Women’s Open in 2019 was $5.5 million; back in 1964, it was $10,010.

The LPGA’s loss would be Colorado’s gain. After she married Bill Flenniken and moved to Colorado in 1966, she won 11 of the 20 state stroke or match plays contested by the CWGA from 1968-77 (while missing more than a handful). She also dabbled at higher levels, taking medalist honors in the 1972 U.S. Women’s Amateur and leading after the first round in an LPGA event that was held in Denver back in the 1970s.

But mostly she played “just for fun,” and for the camaraderie.

“She’s a great person to play against. No attitude, a good sport. We always laughed at our bad shots,” recalls Zmistowski.

Flenniken’s resume includes three wins in the early 1970s in the state scratch best ball with her mother, Hazel, an 18-handicapper. “She helped on the par-3s,” recalls Flenniken, who was named the Colorado Women’s Golf Association (CWGA) Player of the Century in 2016 at the CWGA’s 100th anniversary, recognizing her then-record 25 state titles. Flenniken was inducted into the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame in 1975, and has been similarly honored in Wisconsin.

Growing up a “tomboy” in the southern Wisconsin town of Janesville, Flenniken played all sports “with the boys” until about 7th grade, when organized teams and a distinct size disadvantage relegated her to the sidelines. With only field hockey and half-court intramural basketball available to girls at the time, she channeled her energy into golf. It helped that her father, Ted, who ran the local school system’s physical education department and coached the high school golf team, had introduced her to the game at age 6, meticulously following Byron Nelson’s Winning Golf, first published in 1946.