After graduating from University High in Greeley, Kim Eaton spent four years at the University of New Mexico, whetting her appetite for a career on the LPGA Tour. A remarkably strong force in Colorado women’s golf in the late ‘70s, Kim won the 1977 CWGA Junior Match Play title and the 1978 and 1979 CWGA Stroke Play Championships, and was a quarterfinalist in the 1978 Broadmoor Ladies’ Invitational, medalist and quarterfinalist in the Pacific Northwest Championship and low sectional qualifier for the 1978 U.S. Amateur.
Eaton turned professional in 1981, joined the LPGA Teaching Division and played the Futures Tour, winning the LPGA Western Sectional Teaching Division Championship in 1982. The next year, she qualified for the U.S. Women’s Open in Tulsa, where she made the cut. She also qualified for the U.S. Women’s Open as an amateur in 1981.
She served as a teaching professional and assistant pro at several spots before returning to Greeley in 1987 to become a police officer and regain her amateur golfing status. She was a police officer in the City of Evans from 1994 to 2007 and a very busy amateur golfer again, playing out of Greeley Country Club. In 1992, she collected a third CWGA Stroke Play championship.
Eaton’s impressive playing credentials are nearly endless, highlighted by victories in the 2004 CWGA Match Play and the 2004 CWGA Stroke Play, Colorado’s two most prestigious amateur championships. She became one of eight women to have won both those titles in the same year, earning her the first of four CWGA Player of the Year honors (2004,’07, ’09, ’10).
After retiring from the police department in 2007, Kim played golf full-time. In the years 2007-2009, she qualified for the USGA Women’s Mid-Am, making it to match play all three years. After turning 50 in August 2009, she added a CWGA Senior Stroke Play title, making her the first player to win junior, open and senior division CWGA championships. In 2009, she also became the first ever to win both the CWGA Player of the Year and Senior Player of the Year honors. Eaton made it to the quarterfinals of her first USGA Senior Women’s Amateur, in 2009, and received her third Sportswomen award in golf, putting her in the Sportswomen of Colorado’s Hall of Fame.
An eight-time Senior Player of the Year (2009-13, 2015-17), Eaton in 2018 tied Carol Flenniken’s all-time record for CGA/CWGA championship wins with 25.
On the national level, she 2010, Kim won her first national tournaments, the senior division of the Ione D. Jones/Doherty Women’s Amateur in Florida and the Women’s Trans National Golf Association’s Senior Four Ball with partner Christie Austin. In 2016, she partnered with Leigh Klasse to win that event again.
A Hall of Famer through and through, Eaton is a past executive director of the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame.
