“Finally,” Kang said, “I’m getting loose.”

If anything tells the story of what has changed for Sorenstam since the last time she competed in a major championship 14 years ago, this might be it.

Now 51, the 72-time LPGA winner and 10-time major champ — three of them US Women’s Opens — opted to return for her 16th Open start but first since 2008 for a few reasons. One is the simple fact that she earned an exemption by winning the US Senior Women’s Open last summer. Additionally, Pine Needles is where the second of three Women’s Open wins came, in 1996, when she lapped the field by six strokes, and the memories are still special.

She’s also here for her family; her two children, Ava and Will, have never seen her compete in an LPGA major (though both watched her win at last summer’s US Senior Women’s Open). And even her husband, Mike McGee, didn’t become her husband until after her retirement.

Finally, there’s the influence of Peggy Kirk Bell, the LPGA pioneer who was instrumental in bringing the US Women’s Open to Pine Needles in the 1990s, and struck up a strong friendship with Sorenstam during her playing days. (Kirk Bell, who was also a pilot and would fly to various tour stops, passed away in 2016 at 95.)

“You know, Peggy was here then,” Sorenstam said of her win in ’96, “and she screamed, ‘Heineken’ when I finished … not knowing my name or remembering or being able to say my name, so I became Heineken.”

MORE: Michelle Wie West prepares for long goodbye

Needless to say, Sorenstam’s age — and the stiffness of her muscles — aren’t the only change since she won in 1996. That year, the championship’s entire purse was $1.2 million. This year, the winner alone will take home $1.8 million.

Sorenstam is trying to prepare like the old days, too. Earlier on Tuesday, Lydia Ko joked about seeing Annika ramp up the practice recently at their home in Lake Nona.

“I can’t hide,” Sorenstam jokes. “And I’ve seen her too, let’s put it that way. No, I’ve seen a few of them out there…I have been practising. My coach, Henry [Reis], came to town last week and wanted to fine-tune it a little bit. I know to play well here I have to really max out my game.”

Having retired from competitive golf in 2008, Sorenstam made a return to the LPGA ahead of last summer’s Senior Women’s Open for the Gainbridge in February 2021. She made the cut, she flagged over the weekend, finishing 79-76 to end in 74th place. Since then, she’s been grinding on the range, but lately she’s made sure to transition into playing too (from the blue tees, to simulate the difficulty she’ll encounter this week), knowing too well the difference between practising this sport and actually competing.

“My goal is obviously to play the best I can,” Sorenstam said. “I know what I’m capable of. I can hit fairways and greens. I can make putts. That’s my goal this week. Obviously, I’m in a different position now than in ’96 where I was probably one of the longest off the tees and would hit last into the greens. Now it’s the reverse.”

After playing a practice round on Monday night, Sorenstam took a side trip to a strange destination — the maintenance shed. She knew that Pine Needles had brought on a large, mostly female crew for the championship, and she wanted to stop by, chat with some of them and say thank you.

Everywhere she looks this week, Sorenstam will be able to see the growth in her sport that was inspired at least in part by her own career. But Ko is one of the few who knows how seriously she’s taking this event, and on Tuesday morning she had a message for the rest of the field:

“Be careful — the GOAT is coming up.”

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By Joel Beall
CARMEL, Calif. — Words like “vision” and “perseverance” often are used in golf, describing a gritty round or bounce-back effort from a slump. And book it, those words will be used to describe this week’s U.S. Open winner in some fashion. While true to varying degrees, those words are personified by the five newest members to the World Golf Hall of Fame.

Retief Goosen, Billy Payne, Jan Stephenson, Peggy Kirk Bell and Dennis Walters were enshrined Monday night in a ceremony at Sunset Center in Carmel-by-the-Sea. Though all blessed with talents in their respective roles, it was those tenets of fortitude and creativity that spurred them to greatness.

With more than 30 fellow Hall of Famers on hand, the inductees spoke of the influences that brought them to this honour.

Payne, who earned his place via the Lifetime Achievement category, is best known as the former chairman of Augusta National Golf Club. In his position, Payne was the first to admit female members to the club, in 2012, and oversaw upgrades to the press building, practice and patron facilities and Berckmans Place. Innovation that strengthened the brands of the club and the Masters.

Payne, who helped bring the Olympics to Atlanta in 1996, also led efforts to grow the game with the Drive, Chip and Putt National Championship, Asia-Pacific Amateur and Latin America Amateur initiatives. But Payne deferred the spotlight, putting it back on the club he loves so dear.

“I know I am the outlier,” Payne said. “Let’s be clear: it’s Augusta National Golf Club being honoured tonight.”

As for his motivation? His wife, Martha, who Payne attributed all his successes and triumphs. “Without her, none of this is possible.”

Goosen is famous for his two U.S. Open victories, but that hardly encapsulates his career. He won 33 times around the world and was consistently a competitor at the sport’s biggest stages with 16 top-10s at major championships. The 50-year-old made five Presidents Cup teams in his career and represented South Africa five times at the World Cup.

All accomplished after surviving a lightning strike when he was 15.

“You don’t know where you’re going to wake up when that happens,” Goosen said of the near-death experience. “Three weeks later, I was back on the golf course, and here we are.” Then adding some levity to the moment, Goosen joked, “I think the lightning really struck something in me, I started to play some real good golf.”

Stephenson won three majors and 41 worldwide wins. But her legacy was built outside the ropes just as much as it was in.

She was the key figure (literally and figuratively) in an LPGA marketing campaign the leaned on players’ looks. Though her embracement of this tactic was somewhat controversial and drew detractors, Stephenson was a primary reason the tour was able to gain new and financially-sound sponsors.

“To now be counted with fellow LPGA friends who are World Golf Hall of Fame members is both an honor and very humbling,” Stephenson said.

Kirk Bell, who died in 2016, was one of the pioneers of the women’s game, helping form the first professional tour with Babe Zaharias and others. She won the Titleholders Championship (once considered a major) and the North and South Women’s Amateur, and represented the U.S. in the 1950 Curtis Cup. With her husband Warren (Bullet) Bell, the two purchased and ran Pine Needles until Bullet’s death in 1984. She was the winner of the USGA’s Bob Jones Award in 1990 and an inductee into seven halls of fame, but it was as a teacher that she made her greatest contribution.

After starting one of the country’s first golf schools at Pine Needles, she began running five-day group lessons she called “Golfaris” for women to learn the game. More than 20,000 women went through the program.

Walters, a recent recipient of the USGA’s Bob Jones Award, said he was overwhelmed when receiving his induction news from Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player. “I can’t walk, but when I got the call, I felt like I could fly,” Walters said.

Walters was an elite amateur when he was paralyzed in a car accident at 24. Resolute in continuing his relationship with the sport, Walters had a customized wheelchair built to accommodate his love of the game.

He began to host clinics, starting with the 1977 PGA Merchandise Show, built around performance (Walters mastered a number of trick shots) and inspiration, telling his story of perseverance and chasing his dream. He has appeared in over 3,000 golf clinics, including a number of television shows. Walters is just one of 11 honorary lifetime members of the PGA of America.

“Ben Hogan watched me hit golf balls, Sam Snead told me dirty jokes, and Byron Nelson was once standing so close I had to tell him to back off,” Walters joked.

And though he was the first speaker of the night, his words proved an apt summary of the night’s theme.

“Never let anyone tell you your dream is impossible,” Walters said.

The post U.S. Open 2019: Vision and perseverance spurred five legends inducted into Hall of Fame appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

Each of the four living inductees (Kirk Bell died in 2016 at age 95) were notified via phone on Tuesday.

“I was standing on the putting green hitting a few putts and then this number rings, which I didn’t recognize, but thought maybe I’d pick it up, and it was Gary Player on the phone,” Goosen said. “It’s always great hearing Gary’s voice, but he sounded extremely excited, and when he told me, yeah, I sounded very excited. So it was a great moment, and I felt shaky after that. Missed a lot of putts, but it was very exciting.”

Goosen, a South African native, won a combined 19 PGA Tour and European Tour events, and 33 worldwide tournaments during his professional career. His most noted victories came in the 2001 and 2004 U.S. Opens. He also played on six International teams in the Presidents Cup and was twice the European Tour Order of Merit winner in 2001 and 2002.

Retief Goosen.
Photo: TIMOTHY A. CLARY

After winning the 1949 Titleholders Championship as an amateur, Kirk Bell was a charter member of the LPGA who went on to become a renowned golf instructor and the matriarch of Pine Needles Lodge and Mid Pines Inn and Golf Club in Southern Pines, N.C. Before her passing, she got to see Pine Needles host three highly successful U.S. Women’s Opens in 1996, 2001 and 2007.

Peggy Kirk-Bell

Stephenson joined the LPGA Tour from her native Australia in 1974 and immediately made a mark on and off the course. She earned rookie of the year honours but also became famous for embracing her good looks and using them to help market herself—including famously posing naked in a bathtub, covered by a pile of golf balls. Her record, however, was something that marketed itself: among her 16 LPGA titles and 20 worldwide wins were three major titles (1981 du Maurier Classic, 1982 LPGA Championship and 1983 U.S. Women’s Open.

Jan Stephenson.
Photo: Focus On Sport

“I was crying when Nancy Lopez called me yesterday because I knew she was going to tell me I didn’t make it again, and I didn’t hear her when she said I made it because she started the conversation the same way … two years ago, she said, ‘I know you’ve worked so hard for the LPGA but you didn’t make it.’ So she started exactly the same way yesterday, ‘I know you’ve worked really hard’ and so I started crying. And then she said, ‘But this time you’ve been recognized and you’ve made it.’ I’ve been crying, goosebump, couldn’t sleep. It was like winning the U.S. Open all over again.”

In his 11 years as chairman of Augusta National and the Masters Tournament (2006-2017), Payne oversaw a series of initiatives aimed at broadening the appeal of the sport to grow the game in the U.S. and around the world. He helped establish premier amateur tournaments in Asia and Latin America that gave the winners invitations into the Masters in an attempt to create golf heroes in those regions. He also helped establish the Drive, Chip and Putt National Championship hosted at Augusta National the Sunday prior to the Masters. And in 2012, he oversaw the admission of the first female members into Augusta National.

Former Masters chairman Billy Payne.
Photo: Rob Carr

Walters was a talented golfer whose life took a harrowing turn when he was paralysed at age 24 in a golf cart accident. But it didn’t prevent him from staying involved in the game, as he would go on to perform thousands of golf clinics around the world, becoming an iconic figure to many fans for his trick shots as well as his lessons on life.

Dennis Walters
Photo: Jim Rogash

“Everybody has a story of how they got here, but I think my story is probably the most unlikely journey to get to any type of Hall of Fame that anyone’s ever done,” Walters said. “I was laying in a hospital bed 44 years ago, and I never thought I was actually getting out of that bed. I’ve done so many things I’ve never thought were possible, but it also gives me the opportunity to show others what’s possible.”

Goosen and Stephenson gained entry as male and female competitors, while Bell, Payne and Walters were all nominated through the lifetime achievement category. Their additions bring the total number of Hall of Fame members to 160.

The five were among a group of 15 finalists that included Graham Marsh, Corey Pavin, Hal Sutton, Susie Maxwell Berning, Beverly Hanson, Sandra Palmer, Dottie Pepper, Jim Ferrier, Catherine Lacoste and Calvin Peete.

The official induction ceremony is June 10, 2019, the Monday prior to the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach.

The post World Golf Hall of Fame set to induct five new members in Class of 2019 appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.