Annika Sorenstam will open in the United States this week. This is how she prepares

Bamberg short Sponsored by Charles Schwab, host of the Charles Schwab Challenge.

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If anyone shows the fairway and green spirit of our open golf balls as deep as Ben Hogan and Mickey Wright, it is Swedish legend Annika Sorenstam, who won her Adoption Homes National Open four times. Sorenstam has lived in Orlando for decades, but is still 54 years old. Memo to us: Take her as much as you can. To them: Good luck.

Sorenstam’s first three Opens were in 1995, 1996 and 2006. Then, four summers ago, Sorenstam won her first American Senior Women’s Open, winning her daughter and son (ava and will McGee) to win eight American Senior Women’s Opens in eight. That was in 2021. Of the three senior women since then, Sorenstam completed the T5, T4 and 4. Her husband, Mike McGee, was almost always nearby when he played football at Annika. So are the kids. This is a family matter.

This week, golfers of a certain age (50+ and Pride!) were called at the San Diego Country Club, where Mickey Wright won four American Open Championships, logging in to countless rounds of growth. Hogan also won four opens, once said Wright had the best swing he’d ever seen of “man or woman”. But he didn’t catch Annika at her peak.

Seven-time minority champion Karrie Webb is in the field. The same goes for defending champion Leta Lindley. And Juli Inkster (65-year-old nearly cut LPGA last week), Liselotte Neumann and Annika’s sister Charlotta Sorenstam. Talk about going backwards. You can say that this national championship is the least valued event on the golf course.

Of course, Sorenstein was ready for San Diego. However, she was once famous for the eight-hour range of eight hours. That doesn’t mean she’s on the wing. Annika has nothing.

Still, she said in a phone interview last week: “I really don’t know what will happen.” (Mike McGee, who manages his wife’s business life, says if Annika says if Annika calls you at a designated time and a minute. She is the least popular person for superstar golfers. We offer not a tip list for dressing up as gambling, but because we’ve seen the movie before: Annika Sorenstam has little chance of not finishing in the top 10 this week, and no one has a nap in the caddy yard.

If you’ve seen Sorenstam waving clubs since she was 50, you’ve probably made the observation: Her swing No change. “It might be so, but the ball doesn’t have anywhere,” said former teenage tennis player Sorenstein, who reflected his compliments. echt Annika.

More importantly, her length and other competitors’ lengths are not important, not when the course has the proper settings. (It is impossible to make a proper, tried course setting when players can kick off for 350 yards.) Last year, the U.S. Women’s Open played at 6,700 yards at Lancaster Country Club, and the setting was as powerful and appropriate as you would like to see. Augusta National participated in the club’s Amateur Women’s pre-match event, playing at 6,300 yards, giving the public a chance to see how Bobby Jones and Alister Mackenzie plan to play. The San Diego Country Club course will be for senior women and will reach 6,000 yards. Sense golf – a concept. Let us all give applause to return to three 5 5 5 1 1 category that our predecessors value very much. This is a beautiful thing. Annika revolves around her path around the US Open route (Ditto).

“USGA has a special place in my heart,” Sorenstam said. The U.S. Open (for senior women) is one of the few events she attends every year. She was the runner-up for the 1992 Arizona golfer’s American female amateur, losing to Vicki Goetze in the final. The winner is now Vicki Goetze-Ackerman and the president of the LPGA Players Association. GVA is also in the wild in San Diego. What is a long game like golf? Florida golf coach Goetze-Ackerman still hit it in the face, her drive probably walked 220 yards, and she could shoot anywhere as long as she played the right t-shirt. Her son, Jake Ackerman, played for Coastal Carolina.

“When you’re a serious competitor, nothing is as stumbling in a USGA game,” Sorenstam spoke in her familiar, measured tone, suggesting her extensive emotional control. “We’re not that serious outside the rope right now. But once you get in there, you can.”

As a mother, wife, businessman and philanthropist, Sorenstam is in the permanent movement. The Annika Foundation hosts a series of junior and college amateur events for women. She is the president of the International Golf Federation, which is responsible for golf at the Olympics. In addition to men’s and women’s competitions, the mixed team will be held for the first time in the Olympic golf competitions held in the Riviera in 2028. Sorenstein is a major supporter of the increase in the game. Competitive golf is low on her to-do list these days. (“I’ll never choose golf now than family,” she said.) Asked her how she prepared for the senior open, she said, “I went to the range to find the rhythm.”

What concept! Rhythm used to be the core element of any serious golf conversation. But even with R-Word recently, how often do you listen to TV commentators during a PGA Tour event? Almost never.

Rhythm has always been the core golf value of Annika, and her trade inventory has always been a repeatable swing. If you want to see the action of golf history, and waving a swing at the pinnacle of its rhythmic beauty, watch Sorenstam’s clip of Sorenstam appeared in 2003 at Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth.

The 2003 colony was Bobby Riggs of Modern Golf Jean King Moment The battle of gender. At the time, the world was watching Billie Jean do her thing in Texas, and 30 years later, it was watching Annika. tiger Watch it on TV. (Woods and Annika were both represented by Mark Steinberg at the time and practiced some together.) A few years later, Woods recalled Annika’s outstanding performance, with amazing details until the weather and course conditions.

Sorentsam was a bunch of nerves, the first time when she was preparing to hit her first shot in the first round. Her first swaying rhythm, with fairway wood, is a symphony watch. As she left the T-shirt box, the sailor with knees bent over told the rest of the story. She really didn’t miss the first round of 71 shooting. She ran out of fuel somewhere in the second round of 74.

“If you want to reach your potential, you have to put yourself in a place that is really uncomfortable,” Sorenstein said. She talked about her lasting lessons on the PGA Tour a week, from these two rounds of Colonial Country Club, where she trained her dozens of cameras, the first female golfer to do so since the end of World War II. (Babe Zaharias was criminally underrated in 1945.) “If you want to change something in your life, you can’t just keep doing the same thing, or you’ll get the same result,” Sorenstam said.

In recent years, Sorenstam has joined Augusta National and Pine Valley, both clubs that have been fortresses for men’s golf for decades. Over the years, the enormous bureaucracy of the Olympic movement has been the vast majority of men. Annika and her son Will have been headlines for the PNC Championships over the past three years, an event that was known as the Father/Son Challenge in 2019. (Annika says her Southpaw son is more intuitive and creative golfer than her.) LPGA has only two female specialists. The men and women of golf are real, but for Sorenstein, it was never an obstacle.

“Growing up in Sweden, I played with 20 boys and one girl,” Sorenstein said. The other girl was Charlotte. A tour player in the Colonial in 2003, she felt at home when attending the event. “They invited me,” she said. Augusta was like Pine Valley. (“It’s amazing to take these bucket list classes almost whenever I want,” she said. ) PNC activity has only become bigger and better since it opened up a wider field. Now, grandfather and grandson are playing together on the field. One day, grandmother with granddaughters will appear. Some pairs will be the first to do so.

“Life is about opportunity,” Sorenstein said. “You can take them away or pass them on. In the colony, I walked out of the box. I was shy of nature, but I did. I left my comfort zone.”

She left her comfort zone and entered a whole new world. Her Augusta national membership and IGF presidency and her fourth U.S. Open all came from her colonial experience in a confrontational way. We say this because colonies help open up a clear possibility. These two days at Colonial Country Club proved a lot of things, one of which was: the power to say “yes, push yourself, try new things.” This week, Annika Sorenstam will try to be the first two-time champion of the Senior Women’s Open. She seems to be telling us: If you open your eyes and your mind, there will always be something new.

Michael Bamberger welcomes your comment michael.bamberger@golf.com