I first met Annika Sörenstam on the Thursday of the 1992 Standard Register Ping tournament at the Moon Valley Country Club in Phoenix, Arizona. Then the shyest of 21-year-olds and a student at the University of Arizona, she had been invited to play in the tournament, only to be turned out of the competitors’ car park the moment she arrived. The car park attendant said it was plain to him that she was too young to be competing among the professionals.
She eventually found somewhere else to park but, after dashing to Moon Valley with her clubs slung over her shoulder, she somehow contrived to unfurl the calmest of 67s, one of the top scores of the day.
Though most of the media interest was in well-known names such as Nancy Lopez, Patty Sheehan and Juli Inkster, I stayed behind to ask Annika whether or not she had a specific ambition in golf. What I thought she said – and what she would confirm she had said when I persuaded her to speak up a bit – was as follows: “It’s to score in the 50s.”
Once I had digested that improbable piece of information, she was happy to explain how such a thing could be done. Citing Kjell Enhager, the Swedish guru who worked with Nick Faldo towards the end of his golfing reign, she spoke of how generations of golfers had made things too easy for themselves by viewing two putts per green as acceptable. Enhager had indoctrinated Annika and her sister Swedes with the notion that one putt was enough.
Nine years on, when Annika was back at Moon Valley for another Standard Register Ping tournament, she achieved her ambition in returning that sub-60 score. Twenty-five years ago this week, she shot a staggering second-round 59 and, as everyone knows, she has rejoiced in the title of “Ms. 59” ever since.
A few weeks ago, I asked her if any of those 59 shots felt as if she had only hit them yesterday. She thought not, and then she thought again. “If I had to name one shot, I would need to name two, and it would be the drive and the approach I hit to the final green, the ninth in my case. I was so nervous and so pumped up that I could easily have signed off with a bogey.”
Rather like that occasion when she had her altercation with the car park attendant, her day had not got off to the best start. She had been stuck in traffic and was not her usual well-organised self when she stood on the 10th tee, her first. “It was a par-5 and a dogleg to the left. Luckily, I birdied it and that calmed me down.”
She followed up with birdies at her second, third and fourth holes and, when it was the same thing again at the fifth, she and her longtime caddie, Terry McNamara, discussed what was the highest number of consecutive birdies either of them had ever witnessed. Annika said she had once done six in a row, “so I know I can do that!”
She did six. Then it was seven, and then it was eight. Eight in eight holes!
Always, when Annika makes a birdie, she puts a circle around it on her scorecard. She was trying to focus on her next shot, but when her eye lit on those eight circles it was almost as if they made her dizzy.
“I’m in such a state that I need to make a par,” she told the bemused McNamara of her plans for the ninth hole.
The par she got for her outward 28 had an effect that was at once soothing and energising.
Now for the difficult bit.
As her threesome – it otherwise consisted of Charlotta Sörenstam, her sister, and Meg Mallon – walked past the clubhouse to the first tee, she glanced at the scoreboard which was looming large by the putting green. Inevitably, everyone was staring at it – and at her. Players with afternoon tee times abandoned ship with their warm-ups and hurried to the first to see what would happen next. Simultaneously, people started swarming through the gates as news had spread of that believe-it-or-not first half.
Though there was a time when she had been so timid that she would do a Laura Davies in deliberately missing putts in order not have to make a winner’s speech, that was no longer anything she needed to worry about. Rather she had arrived at the point where she was armed with a confidence she had garnered over years of working flat out on every aspect of her golf.
Her parents had played their part in the speeches problem by having a quiet word with tournament organisers and asking if they would be good enough to call on runners-up, as well as the winners, to make a speech. That little scheme worked to perfection.
“If I’d been asked to talk about dress materials or something I knew nothing about, I couldn’t have done it but, when you know your stuff, you can join in with the conversations and answer people’s questions,” she said.
Her parents couldn’t help with what had been a second problem. It was up to her to solve it. When she had been starting out on the LPGA Tour, she would hang around with other rookies and generally fit in with what they wanted to do. Then she realised that she was wasting time and creating unnecessary worries for herself.
“I was on a mission. I needed to be 100 percent focussed on my golf,” she said. “I had this window of opportunity and if I was going to make the most of it, I needed to do it my way, to go it alone. I didn’t join the LPGA Tour to be its most sociable player.
“Some of my friends understood, others didn’t. There was a touch of jealousy, and I knew that there was a bit of talking behind my back. But I’m not sure that ‘jealousy’ is the right word. It could have had something to do with how well my game was flowing at what was the best stage of my career. (She won eight times in 2001 and 11 times in 2002.)
“I was achieving more than I ever thought possible and probably more than what they thought was possible. However, I had the feeling that the work I was putting in was worthwhile … I was enjoying the journey.”
She also threw in the fact that it wouldn’t have been possible for her to continue down the “sociable route” because so much was being asked of her. “One moment it would be a press conference and the next I had to answer sponsors’ and TV requests to do this or that,” she said. “Was I a lone wolf? I suppose you could say I was.
“I did, though, have a small circle of friends who are friends to this day.”
Sörenstam’s son, Will, a promising golfer, is among her greatest admirers and, when they played together in last December’s PNC Championship, she was more than a trifle touched when he said of her putting, “Mum, you make everything!”
In accordance with what she had learned from Enhager, Annika only thought about her first putt, never the second. (Other than on that last hole). “You have to set your goals high,” is how she answered Will.
Back on the first tee at Moon Valley, with the ever-swelling crowd watching from all around, Sörenstam whispered playfully to her caddie that she was ready for some more birdies.
“So I birdied the 10th, the 11th, the 12th and 13th and, at that point, I’m starting to wonder what it would mean to score in the 50s.”
She parred the next three holes but, when it came to her 17th hole, the par-5 eighth, she was able to draw another of those circles around what was her 13th birdie.
Caddies are always a little nervous about what to say to their boss in pressure-laden circumstances and, when the two of them were on the ninth, McNamara boldly recommended, “Just hit it on the middle of the green.”
Annika by then was in “I’m going to do things my way” mode. “No,” she replied, “I’m hitting it at the flag!”
The ball pulled up 9 feet from the hole.
“When you are setting your goals, and when you have these visions in your mind, regardless of whether they’re about a score or an achievement, there’s one thing you have to do. You have to ‘live’ those visions.”
Annika Sörenstam
One putt would mean that she was round in 58, two putts would result in a 59.
At this stage, her thoughts had switched to how she was about to make history. She was beginning to shake.
She missed that 9-footer and was left with “what looked like a long 3-footer.” At that, she had to convince herself that 3 feet was just 3 feet, and that she’d made thousands of 3-footers in her time. Just trust yourself, she instructed. “It rolled in – and there we go. A 59!”
Does she think about that day of days a lot?
She does. People are always asking her about it and, when she ran her Annika Foundation from 2006 to 2016, she would tell her students that they needed to work out “what they thought was ‘their 59’ or, to put it another way, what would be their lowest possible score.
“And when they’d worked out what that was, I would tell them to think about how they could capitalise on it.”
She said that her 59 was born of umpteen “visions” of herself shooting 54s.
Today, Rob Ohno runs the Annika Foundation. He never stops marveling at how Annika conveys her messages to women of all ages – “from young girls, to junior and collegiate women and all the way up to CEOs.”
“She has an authenticity about her which is quite special and provides depth to all her responses, regardless of whether they’re golf related or about life in general,” he said.
“Myself, I’ve thrived on a few of those life lessons, starting with the ones that issue the reminders. ‘The road in life isn’t always a straight line … there are no shortcuts to success … hard work doesn’t always pay off … failure is just a way to learn … strive to win but always try to learn.’
“Annika truly has a passion to make a difference in this world,” Ohno added.
Those 13 circled birdies set the ball rolling.
Top: Annika Sörenstam made 13 birdies in her round of 59.
Scott Halleran, Allsport