LOS ANGELES: Annika Sorenstam, widely regarded as the best female player of all time, has fresh challenges in mind after ending her competitive career at the Dubai Ladies Masters on Sunday.
The 38-year-old Swede publicly announced in May she would be quitting the game at the end of this season and has effectively been on a farewell global tour for the last seven months.
A 10-times major champion who has won 90 titles worldwide, Sorenstam will be sorely missed on the circuit as a steely competitor and a role model for youngsters.
However, she will not be entirely lost to the game as she plans to pursue business interests, including her golf academy in Florida, charitable foundation and course design projects. The former world No. 1 also wants to start a family with her fiance Mike McGee, son of former PGA Tour player Jerry McGee.
“I’ve achieved so much more than I thought I could and I’m ready to move on,” Sorenstam told reporters before competing in her last three events.
“I didn’t know how long I was going to play. I was so motivated with short-term goals and long-term goals and winning majors. That was driving me.
“Then all of a sudden I felt like I achieved what I wanted to. The motivation was not there any more.
“I’m still playing good golf but I have achieved everything.
I just felt the time was right.” A winner of 72 LPGA Tour titles, including three this year, Sorenstam has been the dominant figure in women’s golf for the past decade.
She earned a record eight Player of the Year awards on the LPGA Tour after making her debut in 1994, won six Vare trophies for the lowest scoring average and was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2003.
Sorenstam is the only female player to have shot a magical 59 in competition, at the 2001 Standard Register PING tournament, and competed with the men at the PGA Tour’s 2003 Colonial event where she missed the cut.
Later that year she edged out South Korea’s Pak Se-ri by a shot at Royal Lytham to win her first British Open, completing a career grand slam with her sixth major title.
Sorenstam won her 10th major at the 2006 US Open after an 18-hole playoff with American Pat Hurst in Newport, Rhode Island.
“I’m going to miss a lot of these things but the good thing is I have a lot of fun things ahead of me,” she said.
“My connections to golf are not going away by any means. I’m staying very involved with different things with the LPGA and the USGA, and my sponsors are staying with me.”
“Through my foundation and building golf courses and the Annika Academy, I’m involved in golf. I’m lucky to have that and I’m excited to be able to grow the game and not always be inside the ropes, feeling like I have to perform every week.” LPGA commissioner Carolyn Bivens paid tribute to Sorenstam at last month’s ADT Championship in West Palm Beach, Florida where the Swede missed the cut.
“She’s one of the greatest athletes in history and one of the greatest role models in our sport,” Bivens said.
“She continues to set the global bar for excellence in all statistical categories and yet to judge Annika only by her on-course performance is to miss the essence of a woman who is the ultimate role model.
“She’s set an incredible standard for the talented young contingent of players who are following in her footsteps on and off the course.
“While we’ll miss her in our tournaments and on our leaderboards, we will look forward to her continued contributions to the game.”
