Sorenstam, Annika

▪ 2002

      Swedish golfer Annika Sörenstam reestablished herself in 2001 as the top player on the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) tour. Although she had led all LPGA golfers by winning 18 tournaments during the 1990s, Sörenstam had watched Australian Karrie Webb grab all the headlines and dominate the tour in 1999 and 2000. Sörenstam played well in 2000, winning five tournaments. Though her victory at the Welch's/Circle K Championship in Tucson, Ariz., qualified her for the Hall of Fame, her season went largely unnoticed, owing to the attention Webb received. This did not sit well with the notoriously competitive Sörenstam. Determined to recapture the number one spot on the tour, she spent the off-season working on a new physical fitness regimen and concentrating on her short game and her putting. The result was a resurgence that at times caught even Sörenstam herself by surprise. A prime example was her record-setting 10-stroke comeback victory in the last round of the Office Depot tournament in Los Angeles, which broke the previous last-round comeback record of eight strokes. She characterized the amazing performance as “more than a miracle”; it gave Sörenstam her fourth win in a row and made her one of only four women golfers ever to string together that many victories. During that stretch she also became the first woman golfer to break 60 when she shot a 59 in the second round of the Standard Register Ping tournament in Phoenix, Ariz. At the same tournament, she set a new 72-hole mark with her 27-under-par performance.

      Sörenstam was born Oct. 9, 1970, in Stockholm. She began playing golf at the age of 12, and she was a member of the Swedish national team from 1987 to 1992. She attended the University of Arizona, where she won a National Collegiate Athletic Association title in 1991 and earned All-America honours in 1991 and 1992. In 1992 she won the world amateur championship, finished second at the U.S. women's amateur championship, and posted the second lowest score among amateurs at the U.S. Women's Open. She was the European tour's Rookie of the Year in 1993 and with three top-10 finishes on the LPGA tour the following year, including one tie for second, was named that tour's Rookie of the Year. In 1995 she posted her first LPGA tour victory at the U.S. Women's Open and went on to win Player of the Year honours while capturing the Vare Trophy for lowest scoring average (71.0). She also became the first player to lead the LPGA tour and the European tour in winnings in the same season. In 1996 she successfully defended her title at the U.S. Women's Open and won the Vare Trophy (70.47) again. Six titles in 1997 earned her Player of the Year laurels for a second time, then she repeated as Player of the Year in 1998, when she became the first player on the LPGA tour to finish the season with a scoring average below 70 (69.99).

      Other highlights of 2001 included a victory with Tiger Woods in a made-for-TV match-play event against Webb and David Duval. By the end of her remarkable season, Sörenstam had won her first major title (the Nabisco Championship) since 1996, led the tour in earnings for the year, and become the first woman golfer to break the $7 million mark for career earnings.

Anthony G. Craine

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