Subsequent week is the inaugural Parity Week by Gainbridge, a celebration of pioneers in girls’s sports activities. LPGA legend Annika Sorenstam will probably be honored alongside tennis nice Billie Jean King and Lyn St. James, a former F1 driver. There will probably be three sporting occasions held with 180 girls competing for $13 million.
Forward of the occasions, the legends made an look with King placing Augusta Nationwide below the microscope.
“My prayer for Augusta is to have a girls’s LPGA occasion,” King mentioned. “I do know they’ve the newbie women, however I need to see a professional match. So I hope that occurs. I believe you [Annika] will make a giant distinction. You stand for a lot, and folks take heed to you and admire you. No strain!”
Sorenstam not too long ago grew to become the primary feminine golfer to be admitted as a member of Augusta Nationwide. The earlier six girls members weren’t affiliated with the LPGA or skilled girls’s golf.
The 12-time Grand Slam singles champion has all the time been championed for progressing girls’s sports activities.
That’s one thing which means rather a lot to Sorenstam as properly.
The historic golf course in Augusta, Ga., hosts the Augusta Nationwide Girls’s Novice match yearly. It’s a begin to busting down the obstacles girls nonetheless face at this membership and within the sport itself.
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Picture by Christian Petersen/Getty Pictures
They do get to play Augusta Nationwide, however it’s deceiving. They play 36 holes at Champions Retreat Golf Membership, and in the event that they’re fortunate sufficient, the ladies get a measly 18 holes on the massive monitor.
Internet hosting an newbie occasion is a step in the appropriate path for the hallowed grounds of the Masters.
However the membership has but to host a girls’s skilled match.
With Sorenstam’s membership, King acknowledges that the 72-time LPGA winner is probably going the one one with sufficient affect to get some traction.
“Don’t put her on the new spot but,” King mentioned. “We’ve bought to offer her a pair years, man. She’s bought to get to know the members first. You’ve bought to get to know the way it works.”
The tennis legend is aware of all too properly what it’s like to interrupt down obstacles in girls’s sports activities. She did it her total profession.
King helped set up the Girls’s Sports activities Basis to assist shield Title IX rights in sports activities. She additionally created the Girls’s Tennis Affiliation and beat Bobby Riggs within the “Battle of the Sexes” occasion in 1973.
The ten-time LPGA main championship winner broke down her personal partitions. She performed on the PGA Tour in opposition to the boys and has left a legacy many proceed to comply with.
If anybody might make a golf match occur for ladies in Augusta, it’s Sorenstam.
Savannah Leigh Richardson is a golf workers author for SB Nation’s Enjoying By way of. You may comply with her on Twitter @SportsGirlSL and Instagram @savannah_leigh_sports for extra golf protection. You’ll want to take a look at @_PlayingThrough too.
