Annika Sorenstam is playing an open in the US this week. Here’s how it is being prepared

Bamberger briefly It is sponsored by Charles Schwab, the host of Charles Schwab Challenge in Colonial.

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If one demonstrated the spirit of the roads and the green of We golf open as deep as Ben Hogan and Mickey Wright, is Annika SorenstamThe Swedish legend who won the national space of its adopted homeland on four occasions. Sorenstam, who has lived in Orlando for decades, is 54 years old and still in it. Memo for us: Catch it while you can. And for them: good luck trying.

The first three victories of the US Open Sorenstam were in 1995, 1996 and 2006. Then, four summer ago, they again came into competition from her daughter and son (Ava and Will McGee), Sorenstam won the first old women in which she played – with eight. This was in 2021. In the three openings of older women since then, Sorenstam has completed T5, T4 and 4. Her husband, Mike McGee, is almost always close when Annika is playing. Even children. Is a family issue.

This week, players of a certain age (50+ and proud!) Are gathering in San Diego Country ClubWhere Mickey Wright opens, winner of four Americans, recorded countless rounds that grew. Hogan, who also won four openings, once said Wright had the best swing he ever saw, “man or woman”. But he did not catch Annika in her prime minister.

Karrie Webb, a seven -time winner, is on the field. So is Leta Lindley, the protective champion. Also Juli Inkster (who, at 65, ready -made A LPGA cut last week), Liselotte Neumann and Charlotta Sorenstam, Annik’s younger sister. Talk about turning the hands of time. You can do the opportunity that this national championship is the most underestimated Golf event.

Sorenstam is prepared for San Diego, of course. But not with the intense eight-hour sessions for which she was once famous. That doesn’t mean she is holding it. Annika does nothing.

However, she said in a telephone interview last week, “I really don’t know what to expect.” (Mike McGee, who manages the life of his wife’s business, said Annika would call a certain day at noon. The phone was phone while hitting 12.) As for her expectations, or her absence, Ms. Sorenstam was modest. She is the least conceit of the superstar players. We offer below not as a leaf feature coated with gambling, but because we’ve seen this movie before: the chances of Annika Sorenstam not end in Top-10 this week are not few for anyone, and no one is sleeping in the Caddy yard.

If you’ve seen Sorenstam swing a club since the 50’s return, you may have made this observation: swinging it It has not changed. “That may be the case, but the ball goes nowhere,” said Sorenstam, a young tennis of tennis, drawing the compliment again. True Annika.

Moreover, its length and that of other competitors are not so important, not when a course has a proper configuration. (A proper, proven and true course configuration is impossible when players can run a 350 yard ball.) Last year, the women’s US Open was in Lancaster Country ClubPlayed at 6,700 yards, and the configuration was just as healthy and convenient as you might hope to ever see. Augusta National, for the event in front of the club’s master’s degree in amateur women, is played at 6,300 yards, giving the public a chance to see how Bobby Jones and Alister Mackezie intended to play the course. San Diego’s country club course will measure 6,000 yards if this, for older women. Fat golf – what concept. Let us all give a round of applause for returning PAR-5 with three strokes, a category of our highly valued ancestors. It’s a beautiful thing. Annika by plotting her way around an open course in the US, Ditto.

“USA has a special place in my heart,” Sorenstam said. Us Open (for older women) is one of the small part of the events she plays every year. She was a competitor in American women’s amateur as an Arizona University Golf player in 1992, losing to Vicki Goetze in the final. The winner is now Vicki Goetze-Ackerman and president of the LPGA player association. VGA is also in the field in San Diego. Sport what sport does the long game like golf? Goetze-Ackerman, a golf instructor in Florida, still hits her on her face, her discs are probably 220 meters, and she can shoot the most everywhere, as long as she plays tee that fit her. Her son, Jake Ackerman, plays for the coastal Carolina.

“When you are a serious competitor, there is nothing like being in the ropes at a USA event,” Sorenstam said, speaking in her famous, discreet tone, one who hints at her widespread emotional control. “We’re not so serious off ropes now. But after being inside them, you are.”

As a mother, wife, businessman and philanthropist, Sorenstam is in permanent movement. The Annika Foundation runs a series of new and collegial amateur events for women. She is the president of the International Golf Federation, who oversees golf at the Olympics. At the Olympic Golf event in 2028 in Riviera, in addition to the men’s competition and women’s competition, there will be a mixed team event for the first time. Sorenstam was a great supporter of the added competition. These days, the competitive golf is very low on its list to do. (“I would never choose golf about the family now,” she said.) She asked how she was preparing for the elderly, she said, “I go to the verse and look for my pace.”

What a concept! The rhythm was once a central element of any serious golf rule conversation. But how often do you listen to TV commentators in PGA Tour events even using the word r these days? Hardly never.

The pace has always been an essential golf value for Annika, and its stock trade has always been a recurring pace. If you want to see the story of golf in action and a pace at the height of its rhythmic beauty, check out the sorenstam clips playing at a PGA Tour event in which it appeared, in Colonial club At Fort Worth, in 2003. It was the colonial of the Bank of America then, now the tournament is called Charles Schwab Challenge – and has always been the annual stop of the tournament with it Ben Hoganwho grew up in the fort Worth.

The 2003 colonial was the modern moment of Golf Bobby Riggs-Billie Jean King, the 1973 tennis show in The Astrodome in Houston, billed as The battle of gender. The world was watching Billie Jean doing her things in Texas then, and was watching Annika 30 years later. Tiger He was watching, on TV. (Woods and Annika were both represented by Mark Steinberg then, and practiced some together.

While preparing to play her first shot in the first round, Sorentsam was a pack of nerves, a Walker for the first time, without a network. The rhythm of its first swing, with a street tree, was out of a sheet of symphonic result. Sailor knee walk as she left Tee box showed the rest of the story. She shot a 71 first round without losing a blow, indeed. She came out of the fuel somewhere in her second round 74. She lost the cut and won the week.

“If you are trying to reach your full potential, you have to put yourself in a place where you really feel uncomfortable,” Sorenstam said. She was talking about stable lessons from her PGA Tour week, from those two rounds at the Colonial Country club, with a number of cameras trained on her while playing with men, the first golf player to do so since the end of World War II. (Babe Zaharias, who is criminally underestimated, in 1945.) “If you want to change something in life, you cannot continue to do the same or you will get the same result,” Sorenstam said.

In recent years, Sorenstam has joined Augusta National and Pine Valley, two clubs that have been, for many decades, men’s golf bastions. Over the years, the broad bureaucracy that holds the Olympic Movement has been extremely male. Over the past three years, Annika and her son, Will, will have been key to PNC championshipAn event that was called Father/Son Challenge by 2019. (Annika says her son in the south is a more intuitive and creative golf player than she.) The LPGA has had only two female commissioners. The male-female golf division is a real thing, but for Sorenstam it has never been an obstacle.

“Growing up in Sweden, I played with 20 boys and a girl,” Sorenstam said. The other girl was Charlotta. Colonial tournament players in 2003 and the men who led the event then made him feel welcome. “They invited me,” she said. Augusta and Pine Valley, the same. (“To play to play these buckets courses, pretty when I love you, is amazing,” she said.) The PNC event has only become bigger and better after it has opened its doors in a wider field. There are now grandparents playing with grandchildren in the field. Grandmothers with grandchildren will come together one day, you will have to think. Some pairs will be the first to do it.

“Life is about opportunities,” Sorenstam said. “You can take them or pass them. In colonial. I got out of the box. I’m quite shy by nature but I did it. I came out of my comfort zone.”

She came out of her comfort zone and in a whole new world. In ways opposing the measurement, its national membership in Augusta and its IgF presidency and its fourth US Open victory everyone came out of its colonial experience. We say this because the colonial helped open a marked door. These two days in the colonial club club proved many things, and one of them is this: the power of saying yes, to push themselves, to try something new. This week, Annika Sorenstam will try to become the first winner of Open Women Open. She seems to be telling us this: If you keep your eyes and mind open, there is always something new there.

Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments in Michael.bamberger@golf.com