Sorenstam pushes to beat Smoltz, grow women’s golf
At age 50, all-time great comes to LPGA tourney to compete vs. men as a celebrity guest
The French poet and novelist Victor Hugo once said, “Forty is the old age of youth; fifty the youth of old age.”
Maybe that’s why Annika Sorenstam has decided to return to competitive golf again this week in Orlando, Florida, at the Diamond Resorts Tournament of Champions. Maybe, because she just turned 50, she’s starting to feel young again.
“Or maybe it’s just my old-lady midlife crisis,” the legendary Sorenstam says and laughs during a recent interview. “I’ve dusted off my clubs and have been playing with my 9-year-old son, who has shown a real interest in the game. So that sparked an interest within me as well. I just want to go out and make sure I can hit the center of the clubface again and see the ball go up in the air.”
Just to be clear, this is not Annika making an official comeback on the LPGA Tour. The tournament from Thursday-Sunday at Four Seasons Golf and Sports Club — televised by Golf Channel and NBC (Saturday and Sunday) — features 40-plus current LPGA winners from 2018, 2019 and 2020, along with 100 celebrities and athletes such as Ben Higgins (“The Bachelor”) and two-time defending celebrity champion John Smoltz.
Sorenstam will be playing as a celebrity and competing against men — just like she did in 2003 at Colonial when she made golf history as the first woman to tee up a ball in a PGA Tour event. Although she’s only playing in the celebrity portion of the event, don’t think for a moment that the world’s greatest living female golfer isn’t thinking about what it might take to beat Smoltz, a former Atlanta Braves star pitcher, and the other guys.
“He (Smoltz) plays more tournaments than I do because I don’t play any tournaments,” Annika says. “He’s an amazing athlete and is going to be hard to beat. He hits it high, he spins it and he drives the ball more than 300 yards, which means he’s going to be 70 yards ahead of me. That means he’ll be hitting pitching wedge (into the green) and I’ll be hitting 5-iron. I need to make sure I’m really tuned in.”
Hard to believe it’s been 12 years since Sorenstam retired from competitive golf at the young age of 37 so she could start a family. She won a record 90 international tournaments as a professional, including 72 official LPGA tournaments and 10 majors. She’s the only female golfer to ever shoot a 59 in competition, and she’s won more money ($22 million) than any other LPGA golfer in history.
Her accomplishments earned
her a Presidential Medal of Freedom from Donald Trump, which created a rash of controversy recently when Sorenstam and another legendary golfer, Gary Player, went to the White House to receive their medals a day after a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol.
Her career statistics are already phenomenal, but does she ever think about what they might have been if she had decided to keep playing into her 40s and even 50s?
“I never felt that way because I had so many fun things to look forward to after I retired,” she says. “I was getting married and starting a family. I had my foundation and other business endeavors. I felt like had achieved what I wanted to achieve on the course and it was time to move on. I have never looked back and said, ‘I wish I had kept playing and done this or done that.’ It’s been quite the contrary. When I retired, my mindset was, ‘I can’t wait to do other things.’”
One of those things is continuing to grow the game of golf and make it more accessible for young girls. In fact, the mission statement of the ANNIKA Foundation is to “provide opportunities in women’s golf at the junior, collegiate and professional levels while teaching young people the importance of living a healthy, active lifestyle through fitness and nutrition.”
This is the major reason she has signed to become an ambassador with Diamond Resorts, the timeshare company that sponsors this week’s LPGA Tournament of Champions. In return, the global timeshare giant will also sponsor many of Annika’s youth golf tournaments, including an end-of-theyear event that, starting next year, will be held in Orlando in conjunction with the LPGA event.
This will give the best junior golfers in the world a chance to come to the LPGA event in the afternoons and evenings to watch their professional role models and interact with them.
“Gender diversity is critical in today’s world,” says Mike Flaskey, the CEO of Diamond Resorts. “We see this as an opportunity to not only support a women’s professional sport but also to help grow the game from the junior level through Annika’s foundation.
“We think having Annika involved brings our tournament full-circle,” he adds. “We think it’s perfect having Annika, the winningest all-time women’s golfer in history, tied in to the LPGA’s winners-only event. For years, we saw Mr. (Arnold) Palmer being the host and the face of Bay Hill in our local community. My vision is for Annika to become that for this event. She is the perfect ambassador.”
Arnie would no doubt be proud of what his good friend and fellow Orlandoan Annika is doing.
Like Annika, Arnie — even after he grew old — continued to look at life through the windshield and not the rearview mirror.
“I’m not much for sitting around and thinking about the past or talking about the past,” Palmer once said. “What does that accomplish? If I can give young people something to think about, like the future, that’s a better use of my time.”