Sorenstam’s blast from the past gives golf a lift in this tough week
Hthere is a touch of sadness that the 50-year-old legend’s appearance in Florida will not lead to a full comeback
Golfing great Annika Sorenstam played down her competitive return to the LPGA Tour this week. “This is just an appearance. It’s not a comeback,” the Americanswede said of her decision to venture back into the spotlight at the Gainbridge LPGA at Lake Nona, Orlando, (where she made the cut last night) after having “retired” in 2008.
However casually the 50-year-old put it, there was little chance that the return of golf ’s queen would fly under the radar.
Not just because the Sorenstam family home is a stone’s throw from the 16th hole at Lake Nona – which inevitably added an extra layer of meaning to the occasion – but as a mother-of-two, it is clear the 10-time major winner now views golf through a different lens.
She endured a tough front nine, triple bogeying on the fifth, but recovered well to finish with a respectable opening round of 75, three over par in her first LPGA start for 13 years. In the second round, Sorenstam shot a one-under 71 to finish just inside the cutline. Only a true great can turn the magic back on so readily.
On her Twitter bio, Sorenstam describes herself as a “happy wife and proud Mom of Ava and Will”. There is no mention of golf at all, save for the “59” in her Twitter handle, in reference to how she remains the only woman to shoot a 59 in a competition. She accomplished the feat at the Standard Register Ping in Phoenix, Arizona, in 2001. Comb through the rest of her achievements – including 72 wins on the LPGA Tour and a further 17 on the Ladies European Tour, along with eight Solheim Cup appearances – and it is easy to see why we should all be raving about Sorenstam teeing it up again on tour.
In what has been a difficult week for golf, a blast from the past could
not have been needed more. On Tuesday, Sorenstam had pulled out her phone to check on her kids when she learnt of Tiger Woods’s car crash, and felt “sick to her stomach”.
Her return to the limelight, however, comes just weeks after she accepted the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Donald Trump the day after the assault on the US Capitol. The riotous mobs were enough for the PGA of America to remove next year’s major championship from the Trump-owned course in Bedminster, New Jersey.
In an era where high-profile sportswomen such as Megan Rapinoe and Naomi Osaka are using their platform in the face of social and racial injustice, Sorenstam’s decision was not without criticism. “I’m not one to look back,” she told reporters at the Diamond Resorts Tournament of Champions last month, when she finished ninth.
The incident will hardly define her reputation in the sport, given that she is regarded as the undisputed greatest of women’s golf and held in high regard for her
groundbreaking work with her Annika Foundation, through which she has nurtured up-and-coming female players. Some 40 competitors in the Gainbridge field are alumni of the scheme.
She has one eye on competing at the US Senior Women’s Open this summer, although with the event overlapping the Tokyo Olympics, her participation remains uncertain. As the newly elected president of the International Golf Federation, her priorities now lie elsewhere, which perhaps explains her hesitancy in terming her Gainbridge appearance a fullyfledged comeback.
To that end, there is a touch of sadness that she has already ruled herself out of joining an exclusive club of sportswomen who have come out of retirement, from tennis No1 Kim Clijsters and Britain’s two-time Olympic gold rower medallist, Helen Glover.
“Motivation is a very personal trait,” Sorenstam said in 2019, when asked what she thought the average career length for a golfer should be. She deliberately chose not to put a number on it, and perhaps we are only starting to see why.