- Sports - Janesville Sesquicentennial
-
- [Photograph; caption reads: Carol SORENSON posed with
a trophy after winning the British Women's Amateur Golf Championship
in 1964.]
-
- People - Sorenson was a pioneer of the links
- With the adoption of Title IX a decade ago, Carol SORENSON
FLENNIKEN probably
- would have made a good story - say, around 1978.
- Carol was one of few women, however, who didn't wait for
her government to ensure her
- opportunity to reach an equal pedestal with her male counterparts.
She simply was ahead of her time, as well as her peers, male
and female.
- Janesville native Carol SORENSON made her name in
golf at the tender age of 9 when she won
- the Southern California Junior Championship in 1953. At 10,
she won her first Janesville Women's Municipal title and, at
16, became the youngest winner of the Wisconsin women's championship
ever, taking the first of four titles in 1959.
- In 1962, Carol, the daughter of former Janesville High School
golf coach Ted SORENSON,
- captured the NCAA women's title while attending Arizona State
University.
- But her greatest triumph came in 1964, when she won the British
Women's Amateur, becoming
- the first Wisconsin woman to win a golf championship outside
the United States. That year, she also led the U.S. Curtis Cup
team to a win over Great Britain by tying for low individual
honors. Upon her return home, she won the Trans-Mississippi title,
topping off a series of accomplishments which made her the Associated
Press' choice as Wisconsin's athlete of the year.
- Carol, one of the most accomplished female athletes in Wisconsin
history, now resides in Brush,
- Colo., with her husband William, and is a member of the Colorado
Golf Hall of Fame. In 1984, she temporarily returned to Janesville
to become the first woman ever inducted into the Wisconsin Golf
Association Hall of Fame.
- Mrs. FLENNIKEN, now 42, spent many long hours practicing
her golf at the Janesville Country
- Club, which, like herself, was a pioneer in setting the pace.
- Alexander GALBRAITH, a Scot, was responsible for bringing
golf from its birthplace in
- Scotland to Janesville. The sport got its start here in 1895,
when he returned from one of his many trips to Scotland with
15 golf sticks and a few dozen balls.
- GALBRAITH's first course was located on his farm near
Ruger Avenue and consisted of several
- 50-yard holes. He named it Sinnissippi - the Indian name
for Rock River.
- It proved to be the forerunner to the Country Club, which
is the oldest golf club in Wisconsin, the
- second oldest in the midwest and sixth oldest in the United
States.
- A few years later, Riverside Municipal was born, now giving
Janesville two of the best 18-hole
- courses in the state. Following was Black Hawk Municipal
in 1964, a sporty nine-hole course located on the city's southeast
side.
- The Country Club, unique in the fact that it consists of
land that has never been plowed, has been
- located at its present site since 1895. It 1896, the course
was reduced from 18 to nine holes, and that same year the present
groundskeeper's house was erected as a clubhouse and locker room.
- In 1959, $140,000 was spent to renovate the clubhouse, and
its capacity more than doubled with
- an addition in 1961. A watering system was added in the mid-1960s.
The club suffered a temporary setback in 1967, when a tornado
ripped off the clubhouse roof.
- Riverside was first known as the Janesville Driving Club
and was located roughly on its present
- site. One of the first public courses in the state, the layout
expanded to 18 holes in 1936-37, becoming one of the few 18-hole
public courses in the state.
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