Shuhei Matsuo
Assistant Sports Editor
It was 10 years ago that Annika Sorenstam won her second consecutive U.S. Women’s Open title in 1996. And it took exactly a decade for her to capture another Open title when she beat Pat Hurst in a two-woman playoff at Newport Country Club in Newport, R.I. on Monday.
Winning her first tournament of the season at the MasterCard Classic in March, Sorenstam almost proved that she was going to be as solid as she was in 2005. However, golf critics believed the world’s best female golfer was experiencing her first slump as a professional when she went winless until last week’s U.S. Women’s Open. She even missed the cut for the first time in four years at the Michelob Ultra Open in May.
But Sorenstam didn’t exactly know what a slump was.
Sorenstam managed to play impressively throughout last week, despite the first day’s weather delay that forced players to finish 36 holes on Sunday. It would have been nicer if Sorenstam could finish the tournament on Sunday, but Hurst hung tight on her and didn’t let go.
But Hurst was much more exhausted than Sorenstam at the Monday’s 18-hole playoff. After the bogey-birdie finish on No.-1, Sorenstam never lost the momentum and dominated Hurst by four strokes, shooting a round of 1-under 70.
Now that Sorenstam has three U.S. Open titles, she only needs one more to tie the all-time record with Mickey Wright and Betsy Rawls, who won four Open titles in their careers.
Watching Annika’s performance last week, I could not believe she was in such a slump – I thought the way she was playing was close to her best.
It is true that she dominated the rest of the field for a quite long time, and everyone was expecting her to continue what she was doing.
But hey, she is a human, not a superwoman. You can’t expect her to win every tournament she enters.
Even though golf is certainly a big part of her life, Annika has other things in her life to deal with just like any other person. In fact, she filed a divorce in the end of 2004, and I’m sure it was difficult for her to deal with her emotion for a while. But what is amazing about her is that she can focus on her game under any circumstance.
The very next year in 2005, she won 10 out of 20 tournaments she entered, which almost made us think the divorce made her even stronger.
This, of course, is not a usual case in golf.
Look what happened to David Duval. The former world’s first-ranked golfer went through a major slump after winning the 2001 British Open. Apparently, one of the main causes of the slump is breaking up with his girlfriend/fiancée at the time.
Although he is not fully back to the level he once was, he has been gradually making progress since he started a new family not too long ago. In fact, he tied for the 16th place at last month’s U.S. Open at Wing Foot Country Club. Maybe we can see the strong Duval again sometime soon.
Currently, the No.-1 golfer Tiger Woods is going through one of the “tough” phases in his life with the loss of his father. He came back to competitive golf at the U.S. Open but easily missed the cut. Now some people even started to believe the Tiger era is changing to the Phil Mickelson era.
As you can see, even world’s best golfers like Duval and Tiger go through this kind of phases. But considering how long it’s taking Duval to come back to what he was and how difficult for Tiger to deal with personal sorrow, Annika seems to know how to handle her emotion at any given time.
Golf is such a mental game, and the consistency of your game shows the calmness of your mind. If the common saying “women are more emotional than men” is true, this wouldn’t make sense. Actually, I don’t believe in this because men do get emotional as much as women do. We men just don’t like to show that.
Maybe women know more about how to handle with their emotion. Or do they?
Whatever the answer of this is, I don’t know how Annika does what she does.
All I know is that she certainly is a strong woman.
07-06-2006
