It’s been a amusing 12 months from coast to coast for Annika Sorenstam. Following her retirement on the first-ever Women’s U.S. Open at Pebble Beach this summer time, she has now been invited to join Augusta National Golf Club, according to Golfweek.
Sorenstam is arguably the best girls’s golfer of all time. She gained 97 occasions as a certified — with 72 of the ones wins coming at the LPGA Tour — took 10 majors and used to be an eight-time LPGA Tour Player of the Year. She is at the shortest of quick lists when the dialog turns to the most productive girls to ever tee it up.
Augusta National had, till 2012, now not admitted feminine individuals sooner than famously inviting Condoleezza Rice and Darla Moore over 10 years in the past. Since then, a number of different girls were invited and joined one of the crucial unique golfing golf equipment on this planet.
Sorenstam has served because the honorary starter for the Augusta National Women’s Amateur prior to now, the ladies’s tournament performed the week sooner than the Masters. She did so this 12 months with Se-Ri Pak, Lorena Ochoa and Nancy Lopez.
Sorenstam has now not gained an LPGA Tour tournament since 2008, however she did take part within the closing two Women’s U.S. Opens, maximum just lately in 2023 along Michelle Wie in an tournament at Pebble this is presumed to be the closing reputable LPGA Tour match for each golfers.
“I thought my last would be in 2008,” she stated. “But then with everything that’s kind of come about with [son] Will loving the game so much and COVID and turning 50, I’ve all of a sudden started to play a little bit, and then getting the exemption here, I wasn’t really going to come.
“But I believe simply being a part of this match has intended so much to me, and to more or less see how a ways girls’s golfing has come the previous couple of years by way of enjoying classes like this, and I’m hoping there are younger ladies world wide which are gazing this championship which are dreaming about sooner or later enjoying at the LPGA or in a USGA championship. I believe that is what’s so great to be a part of this tournament.
“Having said that, I know this is my last one, but it’s been great to be here and really feel now that they’ve elevated the tournament to a different level. We’ve played some great courses in the past, no doubt about it, but … people are flying around the world to come here and play.”
Sorenstam used to be in some ways the Tiger Woods of her technology at the girls’s aspect, which coincided with the real Tiger Woods technology at the males’s aspect. Complete, dominant and feared. She’s executed a bit of of the whole lot, too. She captained a Solheim Cup at the European aspect. In 2003, she was the primary girls’s participant since 1945 to play in a PGA Tour tournament. She won a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2021.
You can now upload member of Augusta National to that checklist as Sorenstam continues her adventure within the golfing global and walks within the footsteps of one of the different greats, together with Jack Nicklaus, who’ve develop into individuals on the famed golfing membership in north Georgia.