It was going to take quite something to share the men’s headlines in this week of LIV Golf’s Saudi millions, but that is precisely what Sweden’s 22-year-old Linn Grant managed to do as she made history by becoming the first woman to win on the men’s DP World Tour. The event in question was the Volvo Car Scandinavian Mixed, and she won it by a country mile as she finished nine shots clear of countryman Henrik Stenson, the ’23 Ryder Cup captain, and Scotland’s Marc Warren.
Two weeks after she had pocketed €30,000 for winning the Belgian Open, Grant collected a much larger paycheck: €319,716 (about $336,200). Meanwhile, the perks included a two-year exemption on the DP World Tour. You doubt that there is anything in the small print to say that this would not apply to a woman, just as you doubt that Grant would want to go down that route. All that can be safely said is that the DP World Tour and the PGA Tour, while ruing the fact that the tournament had not been won by a member of their own sex, would have been quietly delighted at the way a 22-year-old woman had succeeded in stamping out LIV Golf’s thunder. In every sense, her timing was perfect.
“You couldn’t have scripted this any better,” said Annika Sörenstam, who was co-hosting the tournament with Stenson and in the prime of her career competed against the men on the PGA Tour at Colonial Country Club. Sörenstam, who acknowledged “playing faster” and “talking faster” when she was under pressure, marvelled at the way in which her young compatriot kept her cool. Meanwhile, Tim Barter of the Sky Sports commentary team summed up the events of the day as, “One of the most remarkable performances I’ve seen in all the years I’ve been around the tour.”
The men in pursuit of Grant early Sunday afternoon soon were spending too much time flirting with the trees as the 2017 British Women’s Amateur Stroke Play winner whipped one lovely drive after another down the middle of the fairway at Halmstad Golf Club in Tylösand, Sweden. She followed up with a series of serene approach shots, and her putting smacked of a confidence which seemed to thrive on the thumping background music which was so often a feature. None of her putts was of the timid variety so often associated with a player who turned professional only last year.
“You couldn’t have scripted this any better."
ANNIKA SÖRENSTAM
What a performance to put on in front of her parents, who followed every step of the way as their daughter was good enough not to put them under the kind of pressure that Jean Van de Velde’s wife would have known on the day her husband came to grief in the Barry Burn during the 1999 Open at Carnoustie. Grant’s nine-shot lead was more than enough to keep everyone, including the player herself, smiling broadly as she secured a closing par to complete a breathtaking 64 after opening scores of 66, 68 and 66, good for a 24-under total of 264.
It helps that Grant is from a great golfing family. Her grandfather, John, was a Scot who won the British Boys championship at North Berwick (where Linn won the British Stroke Play) and went on to emigrate from Inverness to Helsingborg. As for her father, John, he played on the Swedish Tour and won seven times on its senior equivalent while serving as the club professional at PGA Sweden National. Yet as much as all that, it helps that Grant was brought up in a country which never accepted that golf’s traditions necessarily were right for them.
Swedish officialdom believed in bringing girls and boys on together in the game. When the coaches realised that their young women lacked the strength to tackle the longer irons, they gave them the go-ahead to hit 7-, 8- and even 9-woods. The Koreans followed suit. Such famous long-iron players as Catherine Lacoste and Dame Laura Davies could only wince at what they were seeing.
Then there was Karl Enhager, the Swedish guru who indoctrinated the players of Sörenstam’s generation with the thought that golfers the world over were making things too easy for themselves by viewing two putts per green as acceptable when one was enough. Eight years after Sörenstam let me into that secret, she returned that 59 at Moon Valley Country Club in Phoenix, which has had her labelled “Miss 59” ever since.
Finally, as Grant said herself, it helped to have a Swedish crowd. “I feel their support, for sure,” she said in a television interview midway through her final round.
True, there were those who suggested that the women’s tees were too far ahead of the men’s, but, as tournament director Mikael Eriksson stressed, everything was designed to have the women playing the same clubs into the greens as the men. Yes, the men were playing the short seventh at 218 yards to the women’s 155 yards, and Grant’s male playing competitor, Jason Scrivener, was using a 4-iron to her 7. However, with a driving average distance of 265.69 yards, Grant is up there with the longest among the women.
Which is one more reason why she’s set to go far.
No doubt some prankster purporting to be from LIV Golf has been on the phone already.
Top: Linn Grant rides the support of home crowds to a nine-shot victory against the men at Scandinavian Mixed
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