“Their rhythm is so good. It’s just unbelievable.”
Inbee Park, the most decorated player in the LPGA field at the Hilton Grand Vacations Tournament of Champions, is rather fond of opening her 16th season on tour alongside celebrities. There’s less pressure this week, she said, than typical tour events. The seven-time major winner considers it the “perfect” warmup.
“This tournament is a very fun format,” said Park, “so we’re enjoying the different atmosphere and meeting a lot of people. Watching them play is enjoyable.”
Park, who is four strokes back of leader Nelly Korda through two rounds, is one of 29 LPGA players in the field. Winners from the past two seasons are invited to the opener at Lake Nona Golf and Country Club. Among the 50 players in the celebrity division is Annika Sorenstam, the greatest player in the modern era who retired from the LPGA in 2008. Park and Sorenstam aren’t competing against each other. The celebrities vie for a purse of $500,000 and use a modified Stableford scoring format.
Former MLB pitcher Derek Lowe leads Mark Mulder and Sorenstam by one point heading into the weekend.
“I think it’s a little bit more relaxing watching them getting more nervous,” said Park.
See what some of the celebrities in the field had to say about the best female golfers on the planet:
The newly named Hilton Grand Vacations (HGV) Tournament of Champions will be in January, and celebrities will remain in the mix.
The LPGA’s season-opening event will have a new name and a new home in 2022. The Hilton Grand Vacations (HGV) Tournament of Champions will be held Jan. 20-23 at Lake Nona Golf and Country Club in Orlando, Florida. The new title reflects Hilton Grand Vacations’ recent acquisition of Diamond Resorts.
Last year, Lake Nona hosted the Gainbridge LPGA, where Annika Sorenstam made her first start on tour since 2008 and made the cut. The Gainbridge will return to Boca Rio in 2022 and will be held the week after the TOC.
Winners from the past two LPGA seasons will be invited to the TOC and will compete for a $1.2 million purse with no cut. Celebrities will play for $500,000 in a modified format.
The LPGA’s “Party on Tour” will include three nights of private outdoor concerts and themed international food and drink stations.
Annika Sorenstam playing at the Gainbridge LPGA has been a gift. A gift that has left us wanting more, writes Golfweek’s Beth Ann Nichols.
ORLANDO, Florida – This can’t be a one-and-done for Annika Sorenstam. Instead, it should be the spark that leads to something long overdue: The ANNIKA.
There isn’t a single event on the LPGA schedule that’s hosted by a former player. An annual LPGA tournament at Lake Nona, hosted by Sorenstam, would instantly become a marquee event on the tour’s schedule. Surely officials can figure out a way to package the magic of this week and turn it into an annual affair.
In this writer’s perfect world, the 50-year-old Sorenstam would play, of course. She’d get warmed up with the PNC Championship in December, continuing to play with her father until her son, Will, is ready to take the stage. (And, my goodness, is he adorably fun.)
She then would again compete in the celebrity division of the Diamond Resort Tournament of Champions in January, while hosting her annual AJGA event in Orlando the same week. The Sorenstam Winter Swing would conclude at The ANNIKA, where she’d host the best in the world at Lake Nona, her home since 2000.
“I would rank it one of the top golf courses we’ve played for sure,” said Nelly Korda of the impeccably kept Tom Fazio design.
Annika Sorenstam during round three of the 2021 Gainbridge LPGA at Lake Nona Golf and Country Club. (Photo by Julio Aguilar/Getty Images)
There would be so much natural synergy between an LPGA event and Sorenstam’s foundation. There are 40 players in this week’s field who are ANNIKA alumni. Maria Fassi, Celine Boutier, Patty Tavatanakit, Angel Yin and Linnea Strom are among those who have won her events. Leona Maguire, Bronte Law and Fassi are recipients of the ANNIKA Award presented by Stifel, given annually to the best Division I player in women’s college golf.
Spots in Sorenstam’s LPGA event could be reserved for the ANNIKA Award winner as well as the winner of the AJGA Diamond Resorts ANNIKA Invitational, ideally played the week before.
Sorenstam decided to play this week in large part to prepare for the U.S. Senior Women’s Open in August. Her commitment to the young championship, now in its third year, will go a long way toward establishing its place in the game.
Many LPGA players leave the tour to start families or get off the road when their kids reach school age. Sorenstam’s return to golf at 50 for the Senior Women’s Open sends a strong message that you can always go back. (What she did this week, however, making the cut in an LPGA event after nearly a 13-year layoff, is peak GOAT.)
Should Sorenstam decide to make it a run at the Senior Women’s Open and play the next five years, perhaps etching her name on the trophy several times, she’d provide an immeasurable boost to a championship that took far too long to come to life.
Annika Sorenstam walks during the first round of the 2021 Gainnbridge LPGA at Lake Nona Golf and Country Club. (Photo by Cliff Hawkins/Getty Images)
In June, Sorenstam will host the Scandinavian Mixed on the Ladies European Tour in Sweden along with fellow Nona resident Henrik Stenson. Given that the event takes place ahead of the Senior Women’s Open, maybe she’ll use the opportunity to get back inside the ropes closer to Brooklawn.
On Wednesday, when a reporter tried to ask Sorenstam about taking a spot in the ANA Inspiration in April, the 10-time major winner was shaking her head “no” before he could even finish the question.
“I’m in a different place in my life,” she said.
No one is looking for a comeback from Sorenstam. She’s made it clear that’s not happening. But a handful of meaningful starts each year from one of the greatest to ever play the game would provide an intriguing bridge between the past, present and future.
Coming into the event, Sorenstam said she felt like playing this week made her more relevant to younger generations. Rather than simply listening to stories from the past, they can instead learn from a legend at work in real time.
This week has been a gift. A gift that has left us wanting more.
Annika Sorenstam showed she still has game despite a ‘tentative’ LPGA return at Lake Nona.
ORLANDO, Fla. – Annika Sorenstam walked over to the rope line by the 15th hole for a quick group hug with her kids. Ava, 11, told mom about an English test that didn’t go to well. That got Sorenstam fired up until Ava explained that she was allowed to take a mulligan on the exam.
Ava, the creative entrepreneur, made 15 glittery Go Annika! shirts for friends and family this week. She was admittedly more into the clothes than the golf. Nine-year-old Will, on the other hand, couldn’t wait to get to out of school, racing down the rough to watch his legendary mother.
As Sorenstam, 50, moved to the 16th tee, which sits adjacent to the family home, her longtime caddie Terry McNamara walked out to catch the action. McNamara, who now works for Spain’s Carlota Ciganda, was in charge of dinner Thursday evening.
“I actually believe, as good as her swing is,” said McNamara, “that if she just had some time, which I doubt she’ll ever put the time in again, I think she could still be competitive. I mean mentally, there’s probably never been a player as mentally strong, and there’s probably not been a player whose wedge game was as good as hers.”
Sorenstam meditated Thursday morning to try to find some inner strength and peace. She’d been nervous about this round for days now, and that only intensified as she walked to the first tee and spotted so many friends and family. Roughly 150 people were on hand to watch Sorenstam tee it up on the LPGA for the first time in 4,479 days.
Sorenstam’s goal coming into the week was to shoot around even par or 1 under. She’ll have work to do on Friday to make the cut (70 and ties) after carding a 3-over 75 that really came down to a surprising triple-bogey seven on the par-4 fifth.
Sorenstam’s tee shot came to rest underneath the gate of a fence surrounding the backyard of a house on the left side of No. 5. The rules official on the scene, Dan Maselli, said her ball stayed in bounds “by a dimple.” When she took an unplayable, Maselli reminded her that drops are now taken from down around the knee.
“Thanks for reminding me,” said Sorenstam.
She escaped trouble only to three-putt, saying she can’t remember the last time she carded a triple.
“A lot of tentative shots out there,” said Sorenstam. “I’m not really sure what I’m afraid of, but I think just going out there and sometimes protecting it, which I’m not really used to doing. But then again, I have nothing to protect.
“Just funny how the mind works.”
Sorenstam’s lone birdie of the day came on the 14th when she hit a wedge from 95 yards to tap-in range. A family friend broke out in an “Annika is back” tune that he’d practiced over at their house at a recent dinner. Sorenstam apologized that it had taken so long to give him something to sing about.
The shots are shorter and less consistent these days. It’s a stressful kind of golf, but Sorenstam, who plans to make her debut in the U.S. Senior Women’s Open this summer, still had fun out there with her husband on the bag and so many from her inner-circle outside the ropes.
Sorenstam’s parents, Tom and Gunilla, also live in Lake Nona. In fact, Annika isn’t the only Sorenstam with her name on plaques inside the clubhouse. Gunilla is a former ladies club champion who still plays nine holes every once in a while when her back allows.
Sorenstam tees off at 8 a.m. ET on Friday alongside fellow Swedes Anna Nordqvist and Madelene Sagstrom, who made sure to ask for picture after Thurday’s round.
“Her wedge game is so stupidly good still,” said Sagstrom.
Sorenstam knows she’ll need to be more aggressive in the second round to have a chance at playing over the weekend. She’s currently one shot out of the cutline. Slow play doesn’t help either. She told her group on the ninth hole that the hardest part about getting older is feeling the need to hit balls while waiting to keep the body from tightening up.
“Before I felt like I’ve always had another gear,” said Sorenstam. “I’ve always had another gear. I don’t even know if I have a single gear now. So you just do what you do.”
An opening eagle vaulted Lydia Ko to the early lead at her home course at the Gainbridge LPGA.
ORLANDO, Fla. – Lydia Ko holed out for eagle with a gap wedge on the first hole, a “perfect” start to an opening round on her home course. Ko said the 7-under 65 was hands down the best she’s ever played around Lake Nona Golf and Country Club. The former No. 1 leads the Gainbridge LPGA by two strokes over Nelly Korda and Nanna Koerstz Madsen.
“I had my sunglasses on and I saw it bounce and kind of go forward and disappear,” said Ko of her approach at the first. “But there is a ridge behind, so I wasn’t sure if it went over the ridge or went in. I didn’t want to celebrate and then look dumb and the ball is like 30 feet long.”
Ko drove her golf cart to the clubhouse this morning and said this is the first 18 holes she’s walked since the final round of the CME Group Tour Championship last December. A fatigued Ko sat down on the 16th at Nona to take a breather.
While she’s obviously quite familiar with the Tom Fazio design, playing for score isn’t routine here.
“Normally when I’m playing, I don’t really count everything,” she said. “The last few rounds I played with a few other players just before this week, so I kind of took my score, because you kind of have to get used to making sure that every shot counts.”
Ko played in the group behind Annika Sorenstam, who is competing on the LPGA this week for the first time since 2008. Sorenstam, a longtime Nona resident, carded a 3-over 75 with a triple-bogey on the par-4 fifth.
“Definitely cool for me to be in the same field as I think the GOAT,” said Ko, a 15-time tour winner whose last title came in 2018.
Current No. 1 Jin Young Ko opened with a 68 in her 2021 debut. Ko won the CME last December to take the money title in only four starts on the LPGA.
“My swing feeling is good and the putting is good,” said Ko, “everything is good. Weather is perfect. My mind is really clearing, so I can’t wait.”
There are six current Lake Nona members in the field including Nasa Hataoka, Anne van Dam, Lindy Duncan, Leona Maguire, Ko and Sorenstam.
It’s been 13 years since she won her last LPGA title, the 2008 Kapalua LPGA Classic. That’s a long time for any athlete.
Like most professional golfers, Morgan Pressel knew she had to get back to her roots.
Her phenomenal early success came when she was working with Martin Hall, The Club at Ibis’ acclaimed teacher, from ages 9 to 18.
In 2001, Pressel became the youngest (12) to qualify for the U.S. Women’s Open. The Boca Raton resident almost won the 2005 U.S. Women’s Open if not for a miracle, final-bunker blast by Birdie Kim. Pressel became the youngest-ever winner (18) of a modern LPGA major championship when she won the 2007 Kraft Nabisco Championship (now the ANA Inspiration), improving to No. 4 in the world rankings.
How do you top such a brilliant start? The reality most times is you don’t. It probably didn’t help that Pressel left Hall in 2008 for another teacher.
She remained inside the top 25 on the LPGA Tour’s money list for four more years until injuries, a search for more length and an erosion of confidence led Pressel to make another major change.
As fate would have it, Pressel was leaving the range at the 2018 KPMG Women’s PGA Championship near Chicago when Hall was walking on it. Their eyes locked.
“I gave her a big hug and said, ‘I wish you were playing better,’ ” Hall said. “Then I said, ‘You know you can always call me.’ I wasn’t expecting to hear anything.”
Six weeks later, Pressel called Hall. She had just missed the cut at the Women’s British Open at St. Andrews, and she wanted to get the band back together again after a decade apart.
“He’s a great friend and an incredible coach,” Pressel said. “It’s been a lot of fun working together. We laugh a lot. I always feel like he’s right there in my corner through all the ups and downs. I feel like we’re headed in the right direction.”
Their work is not finished. At 32 – she has been a pro golfer for almost half her life – Pressel is coming off a career-low 93rd on the money list during the COVID-abbreviated 2020 season as she prepares to open her 16th season Thursday in the Gainbridge LPGA at Lake Nona.
“Golf is hard,” Pressel said. “Very few players remain on top for a long stretch of time. I’m looking forward to this season.”
Last year, it was a short commute for Pressel when the Gainbridge event was played at Boca Rio. It was the first time an LPGA event had been held in South Florida since the ADT Championship at Trump International in 2008.
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“It was so nice to sleep in your own bed,” Pressel said. “From what we’ve been told, the tournament will return to Boca Rio next year. They just wanted to take a break with COVID-19.”
Like most golf fans, Pressel watched Jordan Spieth contend the last three weeks as he tried to end a four-year winless streak. If any golfer can relate to Spieth’s early success – he won three majors by 23 – and then struggles, it’s Pressel.
It’s been 13 years since she won her last LPGA title, the 2008 Kapalua LPGA Classic (she won in Japan in 2010). That’s a long time for any athlete. But she showed signs of a comeback when she finished fourth in the 2019 Women’s British Open.
“Golf is not linear, it ebbs and flows,” Pressel said. “It’s been great to watch Jordan get back into contention. I think the whole golf world is rooting for him to win again.”
No doubt the same vibes are aimed at Pressel on the LPGA Tour. Her early success made her a popular figure, and the way she has handled her bobbles while qualifying for six Solheim Cup teams (career record of 11-8-3) has endeared her to many fans.
Especially her instructor. Hall points out people overlook Pressel’s singles victory over Annika Sorenstam in the 2007 Solheim matches in Sweden – Sweden!
“When you have the kind of success Morgan had, you are thrust into a world that is very difficult, where people judge you unfairly,” Hall said. “They (golfers) are doing their best.
“Rather than wonder what the hell happened to a player, I think we should more admire, ‘Wow, what she did was fantastic.’ “
Pressel is not done. While filming one of Golf Channel’s “Lessons with the Pros” last week at The Club at Ibis, Pressel was striping drive after drive, much to Hall’s delight.
Annika Sorenstam has evolved into something of a mentor for many up-and-coming LPGA players. Her presence at the Gainbridge LPGA is huge.
ORLANDO, Florida – Annika Sorenstam was on her way to the first tee Tuesday when she picked up her phone to check on her kids and saw the news of Tiger Woods’ single-car rollover crash. Sorenstam felt sick to her stomach as she shared what she’d read with Danielle Kang.
“I felt this kind of sting in my heart,” said Sorenstam, “like what’s happening. Because really at that time it was probably 3 p.m. or so. There was really not much information. … I’m just glad that he’s alive.”
Two of the greatest to ever play the game. Two icons. Two former partners at Bighorn. Two parents with golf-crazy kids who view their roles in the game so differently than they once did. The somber mood that fell over the PGA Tour event in Bradenton felt the same at the Gainbridge LPGA in Orlando.
Tiger Woods is beloved on this tour, too.
This week is a rare, perhaps once-in-a-lifetime experience for many on the LPGA to compete alongside Sorenstam inside the ropes. A chance to reflect and appreciate the 72-time winner who, at age 50, has become a mentor to players like Kang, who was admittedly nervous on the first tee of that practice round.
As Woods has become a friend and mentor to younger players on the PGA Tour, twentysomethings and thirtysomethings lined up for the chance to play a practice round with Sorenstam.
Annika Sorenstam talks to teammate Tiger Woods at the Bighorn Golf Club during the “Lincoln Financial Group Battle at Big Horn” event in Palm Desert, California, July 30, 2001. (Photo credit Vince Bucci/AFP via Getty Images)
Anna Nordqvist was the first to receive a scholarship from Sorenstam around 15 years ago. Nordqvist was a rookie on the LPGA in 2009, the year after Sorenstam retired and while they both lived in Lake Nona for a time, this week marked the first time they’d played a round of golf together. Sorenstam, of course, captained Nordqvist in the 2017 Solheim Cup.
“I’m out there and she wants to look at me and see how I go about things,” said Sorenstam. “I’m trying to, OK, maybe I should listen to my own advice, how you go about your pre-shot routine and how you prepare for a tournament. Yeah, it’s really warming. It makes me want to continue what I do.”
Sorenstam, who is ultimately getting reps in for her debut in the U.S. Senior Women’s Open, will spend the first two rounds of the Gainbridge alongside Nordqvist and Madelene Sagstrom, another Swede who won last year’s edition of this event in Boca Raton. Sorenstam and Sagstrom, who also played on that 2017 Solheim team, have a personal relationship but have never played.
“We’ve spoken a few times, her and her mom,” said Sorenstam. “We sat down in Starbucks and she was firing away with questions about caddies, sponsors, agents, you name it. So been there to kind of be a little support group to her.”
Sorenstam first moved into Lake Nona in 2000 and has lived in three different houses. She currently resides just off the 16th tee.
After Sorenstam left the tour in 2008, she reckons that she didn’t step on the course more than two of three times a year for about a decade.
“To get to our house nowadays,” she said, “you have to drive between the back tee and the men’s tee on the 16th tee. That was as close as I got to the golf course. People always say, ‘How good of shape is the course?’ I said, I don’t know, but I’ll look on the tee box when I go home.”
That only changed in 2019 when she started to compete in the PNC Championship with her father Tom. In the run-up to this year’s PNC and her debut in the Diamond Resorts Tournament of Champions, Sorenstam’s 9-year-old son helped her get prepared.
“When kids go to school I go to the gym and hit some balls,” said Sorenstam, “and sometimes my husband, Mike, will pick up Will from school and then he will drop him on the driving range and we go practice together, because he’s been bit by the golf bug. He’s been my training partner the last few months, so it’s been a lot of the fun.”
For Sophia Popov, it’s a pinch-me moment to warm up on the range close to Sorenstam.
“I’ve never seen her play like in real life,” said Popov, the breakout star of last year’s AIG Women’s British Open.
The first time she ever met Sorenstam was a dozen years ago at the Solheim Cup, after Popov had competed in the Junior Solheim Cup. The second time was last fall on the pickleball courts at Nona, where Popov sometimes partners with good friend and Nona resident Anne van Dam.
“I watched her play at the Father-Son event and that was so cool,” said Popov. “I was like man, she’s got all of the shots in the bag. I’m low-key scared to have her back out here.”
Annika Sorenstam will tee off alongside fellow Swedes Anna Nordqvist and Madelene Sagstrom at the Gainbridge LPGA.
ORLANDO, Fla. – Annika Sorenstam will make her first LPGA start in more than a dozen years when she tees it up in her backyard this week at Lake Nona Golf and Country Club in the Gainbridge LPGA. For many players in this week’s field, it marks the first time they’ll be competing in the same field as the 72-time winner.
So who gets to spend the day watching Sorenstam up close?
Fellow Swedes Anna Nordqvist and Madelene Sagstrom will tee off at 12:25 p.m. E.T. Nordqivst, 33, was a rookie on the LPGA the year after Sorenstam retired. The eight-time winner used to live in Lake Nona but has since moved to Arizona.
Sagstrom, 28, was a rookie on tour in 2017 won her first LPGA title at the 2020 Gainbridge LPGA. On Monday, the LPGA released a powerful Drive On video in which Sagstrom opened up about the sexual abuse she suffered as a young girl. It’s Sagstrom’s hope that her other victims of abuse will feel less alone after hearing her story.
Sagstrom lives in Orlando but was in the U.K. earlier this week working out a passport issue. She flew back to the U.S. on Tuesday and was expected to arrive in central Florida Tuesday evening.
Other notable pairings include the 12:36 group of Nelly Korda, Lydia Ko and Brooke Henderson. Yani Tseng, another former Nona resident, will make her first start in nearly two years at 12:03 p.m. alongside Mel Reid and Sung Hyun Park.
Gabi Ruffels, who is competing on a sponsor exemption, makes her professional debut this week. She’ll be off at 8:22 a.m. alongside Lindsey Weaver and Gerina Piller.
The star-studded grouping of Danielle Kang, Sophia Popov and Lexi Thompson tee off at 8 a.m; World No. 1 Jin Young Ko, Jessica Korda and Stacy Lewis are off at 8:11 a.m.
Golf Channel coverage will be tape-delayed but a live stream will be available from 2:30-5:30 p.m.
Lydia Ko considered skipping next week’s LPGA event at Lake Nona after surgery, but she couldn’t resist teeing it up so close to home.
Lydia Ko can’t decide how she should make her way to the Lake Nona clubhouse next week. Should she drive her car, take her golf cart or walk to the Gainbridge LPGA event?
“I didn’t think I’d have to make these decisions,” she said with a laugh.
Ko underwent nose surgery for a deviated septum one month ago in South Korea and considered skipping the Gainbridge event, held last year in Boca Raton, Florida. But when it was announced in mid-January that the second event of the season would be played in her literal backyard, Ko knew she couldn’t miss it. The former No. 1 has been a member of Lake Nona for three years and has lived inside the gates for just over a year.
Anne van Dam said she’ll have to drive to the clubhouse because it’s about a 20-minute walk from her house inside the gates. The Jutanugarn sisters, Ariya and Moriya, also practice out of Lake Nona but decided not to come back from Thailand just yet. Lindy Duncan is a frequent practice partner of Ko’s out at Nona – they can be seen on the course settling up bets with push-ups – and she’ll be in the field. Ko joked that she might put up a “Go Lindy” sign on her house.
Anna Nordqvist and Yani Tseng once lived at Lake Nona but have since moved out west. Annika Sorenstam sold her house to Tseng and then moved across the fairway into David Leadbetter’s old house on the 16th hole at Nona. Next week Sorenstam will tee it up against LPGA players for the time since she retired for the tour in 2008.
Like so many current LPGA players, Ko has never competed in the same field as Sorenstam. If they’re on opposite sides of the draw next week, Ko said she’d love to go follow Sorenstam’s group.
“It’s a shame we won’t have fans,” said Ko. “There will be great hype (for Annika). I’m super looking forward to it.”
In addition to playing with the LPGA players who call Nona home, van Dam also tees it up with the likes of major winners Henrik Stenson and Graeme McDowell. Sometimes she plays against the men from the tips (7,215 yards) where her low score is 3 or 4 under.
“How they can shape shots and the diversity of their game is incredible,” said van Dam of Nona’s PGA Tour members.
Anne Van Dam (right) and Suzann Pettersen (left) of Team Europe celebrate winning a hole during Day 2 of the 2019 Solheim Cup at Gleneagles. (Photo by David Cannon/Getty Images)
Last December van Dam, one of the longest players in the women’s game who boasts one of the most enviable swings, started working with Sean Foley, who also works with Ko.
Their main focus, she said, has been on her wedge game from 150 yards in.
“For me, the main key was because I swing so fast, I have a lot of speed in my hands and arms,” she said, “that it’s sometimes hard to control a 60-yard shot or three-quarter nine. … I almost feel like I swing with less lag.”
Karen Stupples, another former Lake Nona resident who will be working next week for Golf Channel, said van Dam’s length off the tee is a big advantage at the Tom Fazio-designed course.
“It’s a course you could play every single day of your life and never get bored,” Stupples said.
Before the tour resumed last summer in July at the Drive On event in Toledo, Foley gave Ko and Duncan several games to try to keep things interesting. They sometimes played worst ball for nine holes or worked on their wedge games by playing from the forward tees.
Ko flew back to South Korea after the CME Group Tour Championship and took six weeks off from golf, her longest stretch to date.
“I couldn’t breathe out of my left nostril before the surgery,” said Ko, who was told it would take two to three months to fully recover.
Ko has met with Foley several times since she returned to Florida and said they’ve picked up where they left off last season. She was quite pleased with the consistency of her game in the 12 tournaments she played after the LPGA season resumed last July. She posted nine top-20 finishes and didn’t miss a single cut.
In addition to changes in technique, Ko said Foley has taught her a lot about acceptance and gratitude.
Sometimes it’s easy to get so invested in the moment, she explained, and get emotional or irrational when things don’t go her way. She has worked on doing her best in the moment and then moving on.
“I tried to play with that mindset last year,” she said, “to be able to play more freely and just kind of trust myself. I think that’s sometimes more important than the technical side.”
The 15-time LPGA winner doesn’t often keep score when she’s practicing at home. She does, however, remember a period early on at Nona when she just wanted to break par.
Van Dam actually has two chances to compete at home this year with the Big Green Egg Dutch Ladies Open being played less than 15 minutes from her house in Holland at the Rosendaelsche Golf Club June 30-July 3 on the Ladies European Tour.
That’s a tougher commute given that it’s on the heels of the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship in Atlanta.
Those with local knowledge at Nona have the benefit of skipping five-hour practice rounds. They’ll have the comforts of their own bed and their own fridge and popping out late in the evening for a quick loop. They won’t have to worry about heavy traffic or getting lost.
But, unlike many rounds played at home, they will have to keep score.
Yani Tseng, a 15-time LPGA winner and former World No. 1, was once at the top of the game and an icon in her native Taiwan. What happened?
Yani Tseng has not won on the LPGA for 3,243 days. She hasn’t competed for 663 days.
Where in the world is Tseng and what happened to her?
The first question is easy to answer. She’s back in San Diego gearing up for her return to the LPGA at a place that couldn’t be more familiar. The 2021 Gainbridge LPGA at Lake Nona later this month gives 32-year-old Tseng a chance to ease back into competitive golf. In 2009, she bought Annika Sorenstam’s old house at Nona, with big plans on how to fill her enormous built-in trophy case.
Two years ago, Tseng sold that house and moved back to California, where her journey in America first began and where it’s an easy flight back to her aging father in Taiwan.
“I didn’t sell it for a good price though,” said Tseng, smiling behind her mask during a recent FaceTime call. She was at The Farms Golf Club in Rancho Sante Fe, her bag slung over her shoulder as she headed over to the practice area.
The second question – What happened to Yani? – takes more time to unpack.
At the end of 2012, Tseng finished the season No. 1 in the world. Five years later, she’d fallen to 102nd. At the end of 2018, she was 328th. She’s 919th going into the Gainbridge LPGA event.
“I was playing really good during practice rounds,” she said, “but once it got to the tournament like my mind, I was losing control of my mind, my swing, my body. I don’t trust as much.”
In the spring of 2019, Tseng suffered a back injury that sent pain shooting down her left leg. She opted to rest rather than have surgery and was set to return in 2020 at the Founders Cup in Phoenix, but the COVID-19 pandemic instead sent her back to Taiwan, where she remained until the start of this year.
Tseng, a 15-time winner on the LPGA who is four points shy of the LPGA Hall of Fame, wants to prove to herself and to everyone else that she can still do it again – play golf at the highest level. The powerful yet sensitive player tries not to worry so much about what others think, but it’s still there. Especially when she’s back in Taiwan, where it’s impossible to escape her celebrity status.
“People ask, ‘What’s going on Yani? Why, why, why,’ ” she said. “Sometimes I want to know why too.”
• • •
Two years ago, Tseng wished none of it had happened. That she’d never become the youngest player to win five majors. Never been World No. 1 for 109 consecutive weeks. That’d she’d never dominated a worldwide tour to the point that she couldn’t legally have a beer in her home country without it making the evening news.
“Now that I’m getting older,” she said, “people are telling me to drink more. Maybe they think I need to relax.”
Dips and plateaus are nothing new in golf. Few get to experience the gift of going out on top like Lorena Ochoa or Sorenstam. But Tseng’s downward motion wasn’t a dip. It was a dive so spectacularly awful that she can’t fully explain it.
“I don’t know how many times I cried,” she said, “how many times I cried on the course.”
The seeds of doubt first crept in ever-so-slightly. Tseng’s current instructor, Chris Mayson, said Yani tells a story of finishing fifth in a tournament in Asia, and fielding a “What happened?” question from a reporter. The next week she posted another top 10 and was met with “Why are you in a slump?” As crazy as it sounds, that sent Tseng searching for answers.
When she got to No. 1 in the world, Tseng thought she needed to spend 12 hours on the range pounding balls because, in her mind, that’s what a top-ranked player should do. It wasn’t how she got to No. 1, but that didn’t matter.
“I was looking at (what) I imagined World No. 1 should be,” she once said, “someone much better than I am.”
Stacy Lewis battled against Tseng in her prime and eventually replaced her as No. 1. You could play alongside a rhythmic talent like Inbee Park, said Lewis, and not even realize she’d shot 65.
“With Yani,” she said, “you got caught watching.”
Lewis never sought out a sports psychologist until she reached the top of the game. The unending scrutiny got to her.
“When you get to be No. 1 in the world,” said Lewis, “people just think they can say whatever they want to you. It’s a really tough place to be.”
Add in the element of being a country’s first No. 1, as was the case for Tseng, and the pressure boils as hot as a pot at her favorite shabu-shabu restaurant in downtown Taipei.
Tseng won 12 events worldwide in 2011, and that included an extraordinary victory at the LPGA’s first-ever event in Taiwan, where more people watched her in the first round than the galleries Tiger Woods brought in at the 1999 Johnnie Walker Classic.
Spectators snake up the fairway at No. 9 to watch Yani Tseng and her group during Saturday’s round of the inaugural 2011 Sunrise LPGA Taiwan Championship. Yani Tseng took the lead after the third round. (Golfweek photo)
At a downtown press conference in Taipei, the same security guards who looked after Lady Gaga whisked Tseng from one stop to the next. Fans climbed into trees to get a glimpse of the nation’s newest icon. LPGA player Sophie Gustafson climbed to the roof of the clubhouse to take a picture of Yani-mania. She’d never seen anything like it.
When a victorious Tseng walked off the 18th green on Sunday and into the arms of her 92-year-old grandmother, Cheng-chu Yang, 20,000-plus fans went nuts.
It was a good pressure at first, Tseng said. But looking back, she hadn’t a clue how to handle it.
“My family, nobody knows what’s going on,” she said. “The team in Taiwan, nobody knows. It’s the first time ever and we weren’t ready for it.”
LPGA commissioner Mike Whan said Yani led the league in smiles when she was No. 1. He compared going to Taiwan with Yani to heading to Boston with Tom Brady.
“She literally couldn’t get out of a car without someone taking a picture,” he said. “The press conference was like something out of a presidential election. It was crazy how many cameras were in one room.”
The crowd cheers for hometown hero, Yani Tseng, at the first tee prior to Thursday’s round. Thousands showed up to watch the action. (Golfweek photo)
• • •
Tseng’s first instructor, Tony Kao, told her to focus on one thing at age 10: Hit the ball as far as possible.
By age 12, she could work the ball both ways and carry it 240 yards off the tee.
When Tseng first joined the tour she worked with a kind, mild-mannered coach named Glen Daugherty. One time the 19-year-old rookie forgot to pay her electricity bill at her home in Beaumont, California, and couldn’t see well enough to pack. She asked Daugherty to bring the shirts she had shipped to his house down to Florida for the Ginn Open. There was so much to learn in those early days.
Back then, Tseng held back some of her power in favor of consistency. Daugherty once said that no one on the LPGA had the leg drive that Tseng possessed, but that she didn’t need all that natural strength to succeed on the LPGA.
Yani Tseng during a Golfweek photo shoot at Lake Nona in Orlando, Florida, a number of years ago.
Tseng has seen a number of instructors over the years, including Gary Gilchrist, Dave and Ron Stockton, Claude Harmon III and Kevin Smeltz.
In the spring of 2018, when she showed up to work with Mayson for the first time, she was swinging the club 109 mph and tee shots that were going maybe 50 feet in the air were by design.
“She was very, very fast with her backswing and got really long,” Mayson said. “To hit a fade, she was coming way over the top. I hate to say it was a 20-handicapper move, but it kind of was.”
There wasn’t one miss, Tseng said. The ball went everywhere. She started hitting those low bullets hoping to keep it in play.
“It got lower because when you’re scared to hit the ball,” she said, “you’re afraid to see the ball go too far.”
Together they turned around Tseng’s ball-striking, to the point that she felt like she was hitting the ball better than when she was on top of the world.
“She’s by far the best female ball-striker I’ve ever seen,” said Mayson.
But then something else went terribly wrong.
“Did I tell you I got the yips?” Tseng asked.
As Tseng started to find fairways and greens again, the pressure to make putts sent her into another tailspin.
“At the end,” she said, “it felt like I needed to hole my second shot.”
Yani Tseng reacts to missing her putt at No. 17 during the final round of the Kraft Nabisco Championship. (Golfweek photo)
She turned to Derek Uyeda, who works with several PGA Tour pros, including Phil Mickelson and Xander Schauffele, for help. Tseng started to draw a line on the ball, and placed her trust in that line. It’s 70 to 80 percent there now, she said.
Of course, nothing can truly be measured until she tests it in competition.
“I feel like my skills are better than before,” she said, “my ball-striking is better than before … just the mental not quite there yet.”
• • •
When Tseng took a medical exemption in 2019 and went home to Taiwan, she enrolled in a 10-day meditation retreat. No talking, no cell phones, no computers, no eye contact, no food after noon each day.
Tseng cried for the first five days.
“I finally let it go,” she said of the weight of the world and the internal demons that plagued her heart. She had sought the advice of so many over the years, looking for answers. In the quiet, remote dorm room, she was forced to look within.
“I don’t want to live my life so hard,” she said. “I’ve been so hard on myself.”
Tseng also did laundry every day, even though she brought a suitcase full of clothes. The player who pushed and pushed and pushed for so long, struggled to be still.
Tseng left the retreat with a peaceful mind. Her relationships with friends and family got so much better as a result that she went back a few months later.
In the fall of 2019, Tseng went out to the Taiwan Swinging Skirts LPGA event as a spectator and discovered something else.
“You know,” she said, “I still love this game.”
She even missed the pressure.
Yani Tseng is introduced to the media during an LPGA press conference near Taipei 101. (Golfweek photo)
Vision54 performance coach Lynn Marriott vividly recalls watching Tseng play a money game against good friend Suzann Pettersen during a practice round at an LPGA stop near Sacramento. There was a child-like quality to how she viewed competition. Of course, there were not yet any scars.
“It’s called competition, but pure play,” said Marriott, “she totally had it. It was unencumbered.”
When asked what advice she’d give to other phenoms, Tseng said just be yourself.
“I was playing golf for someone else,” she said. “I was trying to be a person that people wanted me to be instead of, this is just me.”
Of course, she continued, it didn’t help that she was trying to find out who she was at the same time. Trying to grow up as a human being while being revered as a superstar can, at times, feel like an impossible ask.
This time around, Tseng wants to take things slow. She’s lowering the personal expectations and trying to let go of all the embarrassment that’s plagued her inside the ropes in recent years. She doesn’t want to set her sights on No. 1 anymore, she just wants to feel comfortable on the course again.
Physically she’s better, but she knows it’s still a battlefield in her mind.
“I just want to get back to the real Yani,” she said.
Now, at least, she knows who that person really is.
