The Change Mariner: Annika and the Transformation of Women's Golf

October 20, 2003

Annika and the Transformation of Women's Golf

Annika Sorenstam should be golf's Player of the Year, but not for the usual reasons.
It isn't so much the two major championships she won in 2003 that distinguished her. It's all the new fans she won. She isn't just the best player on the LPGA today. She's also the most popular. This ranks as one of the game's great transformations because her inability to enjoy the spotlight just a few years ago became our inability to enjoy her. She has changed her body, but the makeover went so much deeper.

Once so shy and private she would finish second to avoid giving victory speeches as a youth, Sorenstam has blossomed into a celebrity athlete comfortable with the great attention she receives.

Sorenstam, 33, will be inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame on Monday with PGA Tour veteran Nick Price, the late Leo Diegel and Japanese LPGA pioneer Chako Higuchi. Sorenstam will feel at home in the Hall of Fame as a mature player who has learned to embrace stardom rather than tolerate it.

Posted by Norm M. Wada at October 20, 2003 7:24 PM | TrackBack
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