Annika Sorenstam: What Augusta Nationwide membership means for girls’s golf

Annika Sorenstam has been admitted to essentially the most unique membership in all of golf, opening so many doorways for the way forward for girls within the sport.

Varied studies state she has been fitted for a inexperienced jacket and is formally an Augusta Nationwide Golf Membership member, per ESPN.

Memberships on this historic membership are normally stored non-public, and the precise record of members is unknown. Some rumors counsel that the quantity is round 300, together with a few of the wealthiest and strongest folks on the globe.

Augusta Nationwide turns away from mysogynistic methods

For the longest time, golf was identified primarily as a person’s sport — a white man’s sport at that. However occasions have modified, with extra girls and minorities taking part in the world’s best sport.

In 2012, Augusta Nationwide lastly started permitting girls to carry memberships. Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and South Carolina financier Darla Moore have been the primary to hitch when former nationwide chairman Billy Payne welcomed them.

There at the moment are seven confirmed girls with memberships.

Nonetheless, one thing is lacking among the many earlier six girls. None of them are LPGA or skilled golfers.

Sorenstam turned the very first LPGA golfer to carry a membership.

This admittance to one of the unique golf equipment is a win for girls’s golf. Lastly, the lads in Augusta have let a feminine golf powerhouse to hitch them.

The membership holds the annual Augusta Nationwide Girls’s Beginner Championship earlier than the Masters annually. They might name it the Augusta Nationwide Girls’s Am, however the women get simply at some point on the precise course.

One of the best beginner girls play 36 holes at Champions Retreat Golf Membership and, in the event that they’re fortunate sufficient to make the lower, 18 holes at Augusta Nationwide for the ultimate spherical.

It’s a begin, however not ok.

Photograph by Harry How/Getty Photographs

Feminine golfers deserve the appropriate to play at Augusta Nationwide.

It isn’t simply an all-male membership anymore and girls are clearly proficient sufficient to tackle the problem.

Getting Sorenstam within the door is the subsequent step in permitting girls that chance.

It is 2023, and for crying out loud, there isn’t any purpose to not let girls play on this beautiful golf course.

The PGA and LPGA Excursions will see the inaugural Grant Thornton Invitational in December, a brand new combined occasion, the place 16 groups of women and men will battle it out for thousands and thousands.

Why not carry girls to one of the iconic programs on the planet?

Sorenstam is a trailblazer. She is part of the motion rising the ladies’s sport.

In 2003, she turned one of many few girls to ever play a PGA Tour occasion with the lads. The ten-time main champion and 72-time LPGA winner can also be one of many first tee starters on the Augusta Girls’s Beginner.

Now, she is within the clubhouse along with her personal inexperienced jacket.

Think about the chances that this might carry girls in golf. A feminine’s Masters championship? That state of affairs is probably going years away, however Sorenstam has opened the door to potentialities. If anybody might get these males to provide it a shot, it is her.

She has already reworked this sport for women and girls throughout, however this might be one of the iconic moments within the historical past of girls’s golf. It is time to make that occur and let skilled females play Augusta Nationwide as soon as and for all.

Who must be the subsequent skilled girl to hitch Augusta Nationwide? Tell us your ideas within the feedback beneath.

Savannah Leigh Richardson is a golf employees author for SB Nation’s Enjoying Via. You possibly can comply with her on Twitter @SportsGirlSL and Instagram @savannah_leigh_sports for extra golf protection. Remember to try @_PlayingThrough too.