Even after collecting 11 birdies to post a career-best 62 on Friday at Boca Rio Golf Club and take a one-shot lead into the weekend, it was unclear if this would be Sagström’s breakout week. Not that she wasn’t playing well. But losing is a habit. And with players like Sei Young Kim, Danielle Kang and Hataoka knocking on the door, Sagström (above) was not a sure bet.
But something happened during the weekend. With a temporary caddie for the week – Alan Clarke, her boyfriend’s father, who was in Florida on vacation – Sagström played like she was out for a casual round with friends. Never once did she look nervous. Even on Sunday when she lost a two-shot lead with a poor front nine and made the turn trailing Hataoka by two, Sagström smiled and chatted like it was pro-am day.
She holed a bunker shot on No. 10 for birdie after missing the green with a wedge. That was the turning point, the moment when the switch flipped. Sagström ripped a drive and hit 5-iron from 185 yards to 10 feet at the 11th hole. She made that for birdie to reclaim the lead.
Despite solid ballstriking all week, her putter proved to be the difference. She hit a poor first putt at the par-3 13th, leaving herself a good 6 feet for par. When she poured that one in the center of the hole, even Sagström’s biggest doubters might have come to understand she was on her way to a maiden win.
But golf never works that way. On the par-5 16th Sagström tugged a hybrid left of the green, and then pitched short and into the bunker. She got up and down for par but lost the lead to Hataoka again.
Sagström then tied it with a birdie after a gutsy 5-iron to 4 feet on the 17th, a hole cut near water and a bunker.
Then on the final hole Sagström sent her approach left of the green, before hitting a mediocre chip to leave herself 8 feet for par. Hataoka had a birdie putt to win that she ran 4 feet past. As she had done all week, Sagström rolled the left-to-right breaking 8-footer into the center of the hole like it was routine. Hataoka missed her comeback putt and, just like that, in her 69th LPGA Tour start, the 27-year-old Sagström walked away a first-time winner.
In 2017, Sagström looked for all the world like the next great Swedish champion, a tall, strong, smart player with a killer smile and no glaring weakness in her game. She hit long, high fades, penetrating irons and made 10-footers look like tap-ins. Throw in the quick start she had on the Symetra Tour, where she won three times after an exceptional amateur career at Louisiana State University, and saying that Sagström would win early and often seemed like an easy prediction. Certainly Sörenstam predicted as much when she picked Sagström, a rookie, to play for Europe on the 2017 Solheim Cup team. And even though Sagström went 1-2-0 that week in Des Moines, Iowa, the pick didn’t seem like an outlier. The Striking Viking from Enköping looked like a multiple winner in the making.
Three years later, Sagström appeared to be one of those can’t-miss kids who did. Winless and ranked 116th in the world, she arrived at Boca Rio as an afterthought. She missed nine cuts in 2019 and didn’t qualify for the fall Asian swing despite finishing T2 at the Pure Silk Championship at Kingsmill and T9 at the Meijer LPGA Classic.
“My whole mindset in the offseason has been, it doesn’t matter how you start, if you just continue fighting you can turn it around and things can go your way,†Sagström said after her victory. “I told myself, ‘Keep fighting, keep fighting.’ It will happen if it’s meant to happen. And it did.â€
RESULTS | RACE TO CME GLOBE
Staff and Wire Reports
