By Ron Sirak
Photo By Andy Marlin/Getty Images
May 13, 2008
CLIFTON, N.J. -- The first time I interviewed Annika Sorenstam was in 1996 and she was such a dreadful quote I ended up talking to her caddie in a desperate effort to get a usable sentence for my story. It's not that she was rude or inarticulate, it's just that she was an extremely shy person not at all ready for the demands made of a player when they win the U.S. Women's Open for the second consecutive year. Time, my friend, changes everything -- especially for those who make time work for them.
The Annika Sorenstam who on Tuesday announced her retirement from competition, effective at the end of the season, at the Sybase Classic was a far different person from that reticent kid. She became a woman who dominated her sport and now had the confidence and poise to walk away while still possessing considerable skills and take on the challenges of the business world. There is no reason to think she will not be as successful there as she has been in winning 72 LPGA events, including 10 majors, with 16 more triumphs coming on other tours around the word.
Truly, one of the most compelling sports stories of the last decade and a half has been watching the development of Sorenstam as a player and as a person. She was a short hitter who, through hours in the workout room, became one of the longest on tour -- without losing any of her accuracy. She went from a scared kid to the determined woman who handled the most media attention ever directed at any LPGA player when she played at the Bank of America Colonial on the PGA Tour in 2003. For a stretch of five years she played golf as consistently well as anyone ever has.
She retired from competition Tuesday on her own terms and at the top of the game, having won three of eight tournaments this year and her last two in a row. In her farewell news conference she clearly articulated that she decided now was the right time to leave for a multitude of reasons: The LPGA is healthier than ever; the variety of business ventures she has now are the new focus of her extremely competitive nature; she is happy in her personal life, will marry Mike McGee in January and looks forward to having children. And, perhaps most importantly, after 14 years on tour the daily grind of doing the job at the highest level had grown wearisome.
The statement Sorenstam made last week when she won the Michelob Ultra Open at the Kingsmill Resort by seven strokes and shattered the tournament scoring record by five strokes was that she is still capable of being that kind of player. It is just that she has other priorities in life now. And don't look for her to be an occasional player.
"I hate to play bad golf," she told me Sunday night after wrapping up her win at Kingsmill. "I can't be happy if I am not playing to the full of my potential. I found that out last year when I was injured. I need to be at my best and I just don't have the desire to put in the work to play that way. I wish I did, but I don't."
When I think of "Annika moments" over the years I have followed her -- and I'm guessing the only person who has seen her hit more shots in competition over the last seven years is her caddie Terry McNamara -- one jumps out as a perfect explanation of what makes her. There was a tournament during that incredible five-year stretch from 2001 through 2005 when she won 43 of 104 LPGA events in which she came from four strokes behind on the back nine to win.
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