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A Swede exit: Sorenstam to retire from women’s golf
By MECHELLE VOEPELThe Kansas City Star
But it was on a Monday in Rhode Island in 2006 when Sorenstam put a final stamp of true greatness on her golf career. She trounced Pat Hurst in an 18-hole playoff and won her third U.S. Women’s Open title —10 years after she’d won her second.
And in that decade in between, Sorenstam — who announced Tuesday that she will retire from competitive play at the end of 2008 — became something she’d never even daydreamed about growing up in Sweden.
A shy girl from Stockholm transformed herself into a legend of women’s sports.
“Golf has been great to me,” Sorenstam said in a news conference at the Sybase Classic in New Jersey. “I think I’ve achieved more than I ever thought I could. I have given it all, and it’s been fun.”
But she hastened to add that it’s not over yet. She intends to play many more events the rest of this year, including a try for her fourth Women’s Open title in late June at Interlachen in suburban Minneapolis.
Sorenstam is coming off a runaway victory Sunday in the Michelob Ultra Open in Virginia. She won by 7 strokes and is second on the season money list to Lorena Ochoa.
So why would Sorenstam decide to stop competing when she’s still clearly one of the very best in the world? Because the rest of her life is calling. Sorenstam will be 38 in October and will marry in January.
She and fiancé Mike McGee are hoping to start a family. And Sorenstam is already thriving at multiple business projects. They include her golf academy in Orlando, Fla., a clothing line, her charitable foundation and golf-course design. The latter venture is dominated by men, but Sorenstam is succeeding there, too.
“I’m working on my fifth golf course, and there are two more in the works,” she said. “So that’s another area that I will spend a lot of time on.”
Sorenstam went through a divorce in 2005 from her first husband, David Esch. She’s mended what was once a very strained relationship with her sister and fellow LPGA player Charlotta Sorenstam. And she has healed from neck and back injuries that severely limited her last year, when she did not win a title for the first time since her rookie season of 1994.
With three wins already in 2008 — bringing her career total to 72 — Sorenstam said she’s in a great place both personally and professionally to move out of one phase of her life and into the next. She’s leaving while she’s still at the top.
She watched Green Bay quarterback Brett Favre announce his retirement earlier this year, even though he proved last season how effective he still could be.
“Some of the things that he said were, you know, he loves the competition, (but) he is just tired of the daily grind. And I feel the same way,” she said. “While I’m stepping away from competition, I will be very engaged and very involved in the game of golf, but in a different way. I want to make sure that I can (give) back to the game that’s been great to me, by helping and inspiring young kids to develop and reach their dreams.”
Sorenstam reached her goals — and beyond — with a repeatable swing that held up remarkably well even under pressure. An instructor wouldn’t teach Sorenstam’s trademark lifting of her head on the follow-through, but she’s consistently split fairways all over the world.
She had a successful amateur career in Sweden as a teen, then came to the United States and won the 1991 NCAA title for Arizona. She was LPGA rookie of the year in 1994, when she also first competed in an event that would be one of the most significant in her career: the Solheim Cup. Although Sorenstam could often seem the stereotypical “stoic” Swede, the U.S.-Europe competition always brought out her more passionate emotions.
She competed for Europe eight times in that event, including a triumphant 2003 “homecoming” performance in front of sold-out galleries in Sweden. In her Solheim career, she was 22-11-4.
Her really big initial splash as a pro came in 1995, when she won the U.S. Women’s Open for her first LPGA title. She won that major the next year, too, and went into the 1997 Open going for an unprecedented three in a row. But she missed the cut. She came close to taking the biggest prize in women’s golf in 2002, 2003 and 2004 — then won it again in 2006.
However, she won everything else during that U.S. Open “drought.” Sorenstam was LPGA player of the year eight times, including a five-in-a-row stretch from 2001 to 2005 in which she won 43 titles.
It was during that period that she gained acclaim for competing against the men at the Colonial. She didn’t make the cut, but she won fans worldwide. The reticence she had about being in the spotlight early in her career — she was too timid to go on David Letterman’s show after winning her first Open in 1995 — faded away as she ascended in golf. Sorenstam grew into a comfort zone as a spokeswoman for women’s athletics.
And she also deserves credit for bringing better fitness to the LPGA, the same way Martina Navratilova did for women’s tennis in the 1980s.
Challenged by Karrie Webb, who took over as the LPGA’s top player in 1999 and 2000, Sorenstam began a workout routine that paid off with increased distance, endurance and skills. Her opponents took notice, and many followed her lead about getting into shape.
Sorenstam, who has earned more than $22 million in career prize money, said Tuesday that it’s all been far more than she ever imagined for herself.
“I am also very proud of women’s golf and the state it’s in today,” she said. “I think the last 15 years, I’ve seen a tremendous change, and it’s really grown to an amazing place. I’m just very, very happy to have been a part of it.”