MADEIRA, Ohio – “It was cold and raining one day. …. and I was hitting balls on the driving range, but I didn’t want to be there. So I called my dad,” Annika Sorenstam recalled to the crowd. “I said, ‘Can you pick me up?’ and he did. As we drove away, we saw a few other kids hitting some balls and he looked at me and said, ‘You know Annika, there are no shortcuts to success.’ I still remember that to this day.”
As one of the greatest, if not the greatest golfer in the history of the LPGA, Sorenstam has a large reputation, and for good reason. She paved the way in the sport, becoming the first woman to play in a PGA Tour event since Babe Didrikson Zaharias in 1945. She was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame shortly after that feat, in 2003, and awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2021, 13 years after her retirement from competition.
