Annika Sorenstam got stuck in traffic on her way to the golf course the day she shot 59. She rushed her warmup and teed off on the back nine with sister Charlotta and Meg Mallon in the second round of the 2001 Standard Register Ping in Phoenix.
No one expected history to be made that day, though Sorenstam did recently note on social media that she’d told a reporter in the parking lot the day prior that she was going to shoot 54 one day.
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“As pure and perfect as you can get,” Mallon once said of Sorenstam’s 13-birdie delight. Mallon’s 1 under that day at Moon Valley Country Club felt like an 80, she admitted.
On the 25th anniversary of Sorenstam’s barrier-breaking achievement, it’s somewhat astounding that it hasn’t happened since on the LPGA.
Annika Sorenstam cofers with her caddie on the way to scoring a record round of 59 (13-under) during the Standard Register Ping at Moon Valley CC in Phoenix, Arizona.
Two years after Sorenstam shot 59, Mallon posted the LPGA’s first 60. There have been a total of seven 60s in LPGA history. For reference, there have been 15 sub-60 rounds on the PGA Tour, with Jim Furyk carding both a 59 and 58.
As time marches on, there’s much about the day that Sorenstam can’t recall. The zone can be a forgetful place.
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Sorenstam told Golfweek at the 20th anniversary mark that she remembers asking caddie Terry McNamara early in the round how many birdies he’d seen in a row.
“Well, I’ve done six before,” she told him, “so I know I can do six.”
After eight consecutive birdies, Sorenstam told McNamara that she was so nervous that she needed to make a par. She did so at the ninth. The birdie spree resumed on her 10th hole.
Sorenstam was a teenager on the Swedish National Team the first time she heard Pia Nilsson talk about shooting 54. If she could birdie three or four holes every round, and after 10 rounds likely have a birdie on every hole, why not birdie all the holes in the same round?
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“Of course, we all giggled,” said Sorenstam.
But she kept that vision of the perfect round alive, and when she got to the ninth hole at Moon Valley (her 18th), Sorenstam told McNamara that she wasn’t playing away from the flag. She wanted to shoot 58.
“Coming down the stretch,” said Sorenstam, “in my mind, I had kind of done it, if you know what I mean. You just have to have that belief.”
After knocking her 15-foot birdie putt roughly 3 feet past the hole, Sorenstam told herself all the positive things she could think of standing over a par putt that would ultimately shape so much of her identity and career.
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She rolled in the putt and leaped into McNamara’s arms.
“The place was going nuts,” said NcNamara. “The ninth green connects up to the putting green over this little knoll but the green never stops. There were 30 or 40 players standing on the putting green getting ready for their rounds, and they just stopped to watch this. It was packed, and it was pretty amazing.”
Sorenstam, who had won the Welch’s Circle K the week prior, held off Se Ri Pak over the weekend to win by two shots at Moon Valley. The next week she won the first major of the season, the Nabisco Championship (now the Chevron).
She’d go on to win 72 times on the LPGA, including 10 majors, before retiring in 2008.
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“This was the day for me,” McNamara said of the 59. “She probably knew it before, but this was my day where I thought OK, we can do all this. Because if we can do this today, we can do anything.”
Editor’s note: Portions of this story first appeared on the 20th anniversary of Sorenstam’s 59.
This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Annika Sorenstam shot the only 59 in LPGA history 25 years ago
Read the full article here
