Early ending irrelevant footnote to singular career

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. -- Nearly two decades ago, when the Sorenstams put their little girl on an airplane in Sweden and shipped her off to the vast and intimidating United States, the group goals were pretty simple.

Unfitting end? Annika Sorenstam misses her final birdie attempt. (Getty Images)

Annika Sorenstam was mostly heading to college to grow socially and improve her English, her parents said. Yes, she earned a scholarship to play on the college golf team at Arizona, but far as building a career that would ultimately draw accolades as the greatest ever for a female player, father didn't know best. Who knew?

"Nothing like this," Tom Sorenstam said.

All around him, in the grandstands and along the ropes, players and fans swarmed around his eldest daughter, whose LPGA career seemingly came to an end after she missed the cut at the ADT Championship on Friday at Trump International Golf Club.

For only the 10th time in her 303 LPGA starts, Sorenstam failed to advance to the weekend, but that hardly made her swan song a swan dive. Mostly, it just meant her homecoming parade ended two days early.

"It's funny, you start playing a game that your parents introduce you to, and it's just a happy kind of thing you're doing in the afternoons," Sorenstam said. "All these years later, it's been my life, it's been my job and it's just taken me to all these incredible places. It's defined me as a person.

"You know, I could easily have turned around and not gotten on that plane. Who knows where I would have been today?"

Before we look at where she finished, consider the departure point. When Sorenstam landed at U of A, where she will deliver a commencement speech next month, she used a 3-wood for every tee shot. Her college coach took one look at her swing, with that trademark look-up jerk of the head at impact, then tried to make wholesale changes, which Sorenstam wisely resisted. Then she began piling up victories.

Mom and Pop never knew they were sending a veritable guided missile to the States, one who would change the women's game and destroy dozens of records.

"Her whole career has surprised me," Tom Sorenstam said as his daughter signed an LPGA scorecard for perhaps the last time. "So many milestones."

In typical Sorenstam fashion, she left in a bit of a huff, disappointed that fans on the weekend wouldn't witness her final act. She was also none too pleased that the rules sticklers at the LPGA ordered her to take a drug test, her retirement notwithstanding.

Missed cut or not, others found various ways not to miss her finale, grand or not. In fact, two of the game's biggest stars waited for Sorenstam behind the 18th green and greeted her with hugs after her final-round 75, which missed the number by two strokes. Christie Kerr and Lorena Ochoa, who both finished in a tie with Sorenstam at 5 over, also were sent home when the 32-player field was halved.