Annika Sörenstam – Photo by Max Bechtoldt/Women’s Golf Daily News
Over the weekend, Rory McIlroy won his second Masters championship in a row, his sixth major championship and his 30th overall PGA Tour win. While he was already a modern legend of the sport, and arguably the greatest men’s player of the last 15 years, a discussion really started to brew with this latest win.
With his newest major in the rear view, many on social media have begun to crown McIlroy as the greatest European golfer of all time. Now, the phrasing is important here. It would be difficult to say that McIlroy isn’t the best men’s European player of all time. He has more PGA Tour/European Tour combined wins and majors than anyone else, and assuredly is ahead of legends like Seve Ballesteros and Nick Faldo. But, he isn’t quite on the level of one legend in particular.
When discussing the greatest European golfers ever, it is really difficult to ignore Annika Sörenstam. In fact, she has a better argument for greatest golfer to ever play the sport, regardless of gender, than McIlroy has for greatest European golfer ever.
The most obvious argument against this point is level of competition. McIlroy has had to go up against Brooks Koepka, Scottie Scheffler, Dustin Johnson and more, all in their primes. That’s a fair point to make, but Sörenstam’s level of dominance is so great, that it doesn’t really matter or move a needle.
Many may not understand just how great Annika, from Sweden, was because they haven’t looked at the stats. Well, it is time for a little education.
In just 15 full years on the LPGA Tour, Sörenstam somehow racked up an incredible 72 LPGA Tour wins. Annika had 12 seasons with at least three LPGA Tour wins and seven seasons with at least five wins. She had 31 top-10 finishes in major championships. In those 31 top-10 finishes, she won 10 of them.
When she didn’t win, she was still unbelievable, building up 46 career runner-up finishes, 24 third places and 207 top-10 finishes. She finished top 10 in 68% of her starts on the LPGA Tour, that is obviously absurd.
Sörenstam won LPGA Tour Player of the year eight times between 1995 and 2005. She led the Tour in scoring average six times in that same stretch. She is top five all time in both LPGA Tour wins and Ladies European Tour wins. She last played full time on the LPGA Tour at the age of 38, just a bit over one year older than McIlroy currently is.
While I acknowledged McIlroy’s stiff competition earlier, it isn’t like Sörenstam didn’t play against some of the all time greats as well. She faced Juli Inkster, Lorena Ochoa, Karrie Webb and Se Ri Pak, each of whom have at least five major championships.
This genuinely isn’t to take away from McIlroy’s incredible accomplishment. I grew up watching golf in the 2010’s, and McIlroy is one of the heroes in the sport in my time, one who I have long considered my favorite player on the PGA Tour. But the rush to crown him the greatest European golfer ever, seems immature.
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