Facts about Annika Sorenstam

Annika Sorenstam is 53 years old
Born: October 9, 1970
Birthplace: Stockholm, Sweden
Best known as: Swedish golfing legend and eight-time LPGA Player of the Year

     

Annika Sorenstam Biography

Annika Sorenstam dominated the Ladies Professional Golf Association tour in the 1990s and 2000s, winning 72 LPGA events and just over $22 million. She also won 18 international tournaments for a career total of 90 pro victories.

Annika Sorenstam played her first LPGA events in 1993 and joined the tour in 1994, winning Rookie of the Year honors. She quickly became one of the leading players in the women’s game, winning the U.S. Women’s Open in 1995 (her first career victory) and again in 1996.

Sorenstam was named the LPGA’s Rolex Player of the Year in 1995, 1997, 1998, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005. In 2002 she won an amazing 11 tour victories, bringing her career total to 42. (She also won 2 international tournaments that year, making 13 victories in 25 starts.)

In May of 2003 she entered a men’s PGA event, The Colonial — becoming the first woman to play a PGA event since Babe Didrikson Zaharias played in the Los Angeles Open in 1945.

Sorenstam was also the first player ever to break 60 in an LPGA event; she shot a 59 at the par-72 Moon Valley Country Club in Phoenix in the second round of the 2001 Standard Register PING tournament.

Annika Sorenstam quit competitive golf at the end of the 2008 season, although she did not use the word “retirement.” A decade later, she returned to playing occasional professional events.

 

Extra credit

Annika Sorenstam is 5’6″ tall… She married David Esch, then an executive at Callaway Golf, in 1997; they were divorced in 2005. She married businessman Mike McGee in January of 2009. They have two children: a daughter, Ava Madelyn McGee, born in 2009, and a son, William, born in 2011… Annika Sorenstam’s career victories automatically qualified her for the sport’s Hall of Fame… Her dominance of the women’s tour was often compared to Tiger Woods’s dominance of the PGA in the same era… Annika Sorenstam attended the University of Arizona… Her sister Charlotta Sorenstam also was an international-class golfer… Mike McGee became managing director of Annika Sorenstam’s business brand in 2006. He is the son of former pro golfer Jerry McGee.


     

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