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Annika
Sorenstam has always played golf with a controlled
precision and singular focus that made her the best
player in women’s golf for the better part of a decade,
perhaps the best ever.
Now, she
says, its time to apply those attributes to other areas
of her life.
Sorenstam, 37, announced Tuesday that 2008 would be her
last as a competitor and that she would turn her
attention to her pending marriage, starting a family and
building the “Annika” brand, which includes a golf
academy, foundation and course design business.
Carefully avoiding the word “retire”—she called it “the
r-word,” —Sorenstam said the time was right, even though
she has three victories in eight tournaments this season
and has shown signs that she could make another run at
the top spot in the world rankings.
Her last
event will be the Dubai Ladies Masters, a European Tour
event in December, and she has a January 2009 wedding
date.
“The
reason for this decision is that I have other priorities
in my life,” Sorenstam said. “This is obviously a very
difficult decision for me to make, because I love this
game very much. But I know it’s the right one. I’m
leaving the game on my own terms.”
She’s
also leaving while still within striking distance of
several records, making the timing of her announcement
surprising. Her 72 victories are third to Kathy
Whitworth’s 88 and Mickey Wright’s 82, and her 10 major
championships are fourth all-time, five shy of Patty
Berg’s record 15.
After
winning by seven strokes Sunday at the Michelob Ultra
Open, Sorenstam showed she still has plenty of good golf
in her, but she said Tuesday that chasing those records
is not at the forefront of her mind.
“I feel
like I achieved so much more than I ever thought I
could, and to beat [Whitworth’s] record does not
motivate me,” Sorenstam said. “I’m at peace with what
I’m doing.”
In 2001
Sorenstam began an all-out assault on the history books
that many felt would end when she passed Whitworth’s and
Berg’s records.
She shot
the only 59 in Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA)
Tour history early that year and followed that by
overcoming a 10-stroke, final-round deficit to win the
Office Depot Championship at Wilshire Country Club to
tie the record for largest final-round comeback. That
was her fourth consecutive victory, equaling an LPGA
mark.
It was
the first year of a five-year stretch during which
Sorenstam won 43 times in 104 starts, including seven of
20 majors.
Yet, for
all of her LPGA accolades, she might be best remembered
for her appearance at the Bank of America Colonial in
2003, when she became the first woman since 1945 to play
in a Professional Golfers’ Association Tour event.
She
missed the cut by four shots, but gained legions of fans
and elevated the levels of admiration and awareness of
the women’s game by shooting respectable rounds of
71-74.”It would be very difficult to find another golfer
who has done as much for the LPGA Tour than Annika,”
LPGA Tour Commissioner Carolyn Bivens said. “History is
still being written, but it’s not going to be easy to
erase Annika’s name from the record books.”
Her
dominance helped forge a friendship with the dominant
male golfer of this generation, and Tiger Woods said it
was “sad to see the greatest female golfer of all-time
step away.”
“But
it’s nice to see Annika did it on her terms,” Woods
said.
Amy
Alcott, a Hall of Fame member whose career overlapped
those of Wright, Whitworth and Sorenstam, said that even
though Sorenstam didn’t get the victory records, her
accomplishments are equally impressive.
“She’s
done everything there is to do in golf and dominated
women’s golf for a long time, and that is more difficult
to do today than it was then,” Alcott said. “Her level
of consistency is unparalleled, and then you add in the
59 and the Colonial, and those are the types of things
that history remembers.”
Sorenstam acknowledged that the desire to compete might
someday return—“If it’s forever, I’m not really sure,
but it’s definitely for now,” she said—but said the only
reason she came back this year was because she didn’t
want an injury to end her career.
“I think
it’s very important for someone as competitive as Annika
to go out on top,” Alcott said. “She came back and
proved to her critics and, most important, to herself
that she could still be at the top, and now she can
leave on her own terms.” |
