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Editor's note: This article was originally published in LINKS Magazine. Visit the magazine website here.
By Tom Cunneff
Annika Sorenstam is rearranging a coaster, a pad of yellow Post-it Notes and the Rules of Golf on a table inside the conference room at her eponymous learning center at the Ginn Reunion Resort near Orlando, Florida. This isn't some variation of three-card Monte; the objects are ersatz tees to explain how she would route a cart path to keep it out of sight.
"I'd elevate the back tee and run the path in front of it," she says, lifting the coaster as she gestures with her other hand. "I'd also try to hide it behind the lip of a bunker. Can you hide it 100 percent? No. But that's my goal: to keep the course as natural looking as possible."
Sorenstam may look cool and detached on the course, but there is a spontaneous eagerness in her bright blue eyes as she looks over a routing plan, discussing placement of tees and hazards in her familiar lilt.
Combine this passion with the diligence Sorenstam brought to winning 10 majors and 69 LPGA tournaments by dissecting courses the way a sushi chef slices a piece of yellowfin tuna, and her budding design business should be as successful as her on-course record.
Most player-architects lend their name to courses, especially at the beginning of their design careers, but it's clear the 37-year-old Sorenstam really enjoys the creative outlet. "I like using my imagination," she says. "I like looking at it from different perspectives, not just from my skill level. I love the planning part, the routing. It's like a puzzle with 18 pieces. You have to move them around."
Her fiancé, Mike McGee, who oversees her business interests, has seen her enthusiasm for golf course design growing. "She loves it," he says. "She put a drafting table upstairs in the house and fiddles with her drawings. She really enjoys seeing something come to life, like the Annika Academy. She sketched what she wanted on paper and Ginn took it and built it. Same thing with courses. She knows what she wants and is able to convey that."
'She preferred weeds'
Sorenstam admittedly has a lot to learn about irrigation, grading and agronomy. But as Brian Curley, who worked with her on her first course at China's Mission Hills Resort, puts it, you don't have to be an architect to have a huge influence on building your home. This is one woman, however, who didn't want her space festooned with a lot of flowers, as Mission Hills' owners were hoping.
"She preferred weeds," Curley recalls with a laugh. "She's got very strong opinions. She's an astute businesswoman. She's got the pedigree to step right into the role. She comes off as very professional and polished, so there's a certain comfort level that any owner/developer is going to feel with her: 'Hey, I'm in good hands here.'"
One such developer is Bobby Ginn. In addition to sponsoring her academy and her LPGA event, he has commisioned her first U.S. project, a redesign of Patriots Point Links near Charleston, South Carolina. (Working with IMG's internal design department, she has two courses in development, one in British Columbia and another in South Africa, with five in the "discussion phase.")
"She's a class act personified," says Ginn, who scoffs at the notion that male players won't want to play Patriots Point after Sorenstam's name goes on it. "If men think it's going to be an easy golf course because she designed it, they've got a rude awakening. She is going to design some tremendous golf courses in her career. She's clearly not doing it for the money. She's doing it because she's passionate about it."
Three out of 180
Currently, there are only three women-Jan Beljan, Alice Dye and Vicki Martz-among the 180 members of the American Society of Golf Course Architects. Hillary Clinton may be a frontrunner for this year's presidential election, but females have made much less progress in course architecture-a woman's name does not appear solo on a design of any significance.
"Why?" Sorenstam asks of the dearth of distaff designers. "We know how to play. But the first thing people ask me is, 'Are you going to design a course for women?' I look at them and say, 'No, for a golfer.' I never felt like there has to be a difference. People think it's going to be shorter and easier, and that to me is just weird."
Former player Jan Stephenson, who has designed three courses and has four more in development, has encountered this myopia for years. "People don't realize that we play from the men's tees," she says. "We carry it as far as an average male player does. [Jack] Nicklaus designs hard courses with a lot of high, left-to-right 2-irons, which we and average men don't have in our bags. I always felt like we would have an advantage designing courses. I'm hoping once people see my courses and Annika's they'll see that, too."
Gender equality has been an issue in golf since the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews opened in 1754 and excluded women from joining, but the lack of female architects may come down to a simple, non-political reason.
"It's hard," says Beljan, one of Tom Fazio's lead designers. "The days are long. In the summer, it's hot. Remember, this is raw land you're dealing with. There are no comfortable situations."
There are even dangerous ones. When building the PGA Golf Club in Port St. Lucie, Florida, Beljan had to deal with wild boars while wading through giant palmetto bushes trying to flag out the clearing limits. "All you do is hope you can get to some kind of big tree so you can run around it in a tighter circle than they can," she says with a laugh.
Beljan comes from a family of golf pros-five uncles were pros and her father designed and built Mannitto Golf Club near Pittsburgh. "But it's not a natural progression for most girls like it was for me," she says. "Plus, it really takes dedication and time. Think about if you were married to someone who was out of town as much as male golf course designers are and you have kids. How does that work?"
The rare-breed quality is what drew Hattie Pavlechko to the profession. After playing golf at Ball State University in Indiana, the 26-year-old has worked for Oklahoma-based Tripp Davis for three years. "I was definitely aware that there weren't many women in the field," she says. "But that's something I really liked about it. It was a way to set myself apart and standout."
The late Ed Seay, Arnold Palmer's longtime design partner, pointed out the overwhelming majority opinion when Martz started at the company in 1985. "He basically said, 'You'll be able to work in the office, but you will probably never be able to do it in the field,'" she recalls. "He wasn't sure that any bulldozer operator would want to take directions from a woman."
By the early '90s Martz was designing her own courses and making site visits-with Seay. "He would sit in the truck and let me do my thing," she says. "He was pleasantly surprised. Once you demonstrate that you know what you're doing, it's not an issue. In fact, I've had bulldozer operators bend over backward to please me where I'm not sure they would with a male architect. Women have a softer touch and tend to be more inclusive."
Developers' objective: selling lots
For aspiring women architects, there is an additional barrier to entry. The names on the marquee are Fazio and Palmer, not Beljan and Martz, the architects who have been on site.
"The people building golf courses want to sell houses," says Alice Dye, the first woman admitted to the ASGCA and its only female president. "They want a signature course architect to market these houses. I don't know if a woman's name is a detriment, but developers don't seem to think it's that big a plus."
Dye should know. Although she has co-designed 17 courses with her husband, Pete, including TPC Sawgrass' Players Stadium, the Ocean Course at Kiawah Island and Crooked Stick, there is no mention of her name on any of the properties' Web sites.
"You go anywhere and it's Pete, Pete, Pete," says the Dyes' niece Cynthia Dye McGarey, herself an architect. "Nobody ever asks me about my Aunt Alice. Ever."
Martz doesn't mind the lack of recognition. "People in the industry know who the architects are who represent Mr. Palmer," she says. "He has always been very gracious. Whenever we have an opening or site visit, he is the first to get up and say, 'This course was designed by Vicki Martz,' and bring me out in front of everybody and put me in front of the microphone to answer questions."
For staff architects, being overshadowed by their bosses is not necessarily a gender issue-just ask Jim Urbina (who works for Tom Doak) or Beau Welling (Tiger Woods). But the lack of recognition for women means there are few role models for young women interested in entering the design business.
That may change with Sorenstam's entry into the design field-as long as her name remains marketable. "I don't know how well the name Annika Sorenstam will relate to selling houses," says Alice Dye, "because the people that buy houses are not that sophisticated in the golf world. Even if you said Ben Hogan designed the course, a lot of people wouldn't know who he is."
'She has a huge name'
With the growing popularity of the women's game worldwide, perhaps it may not take long for perceptions to change, and the consensus is that Sorenstam could be the game's first big-name female architect, especially abroad. In the coming years, she has the chance to bring awareness to women in golf design, just as she did by playing against the men in the 2003 Colonial.
"No question she'll be successful," says Stephenson. "She has a huge name and the financials behind her. I've never seen anyone dissect the game better than she did. She's Hogan-like of how to be No. 1, and I'm sure she'll do the same with this."
For now, her $500,000 fee is a bargain compared with those of her male player-architect counterparts like Nicklaus, Woods and Greg Norman. Although architecture is not yet at the top of her priority list-after an injury-plagued 2007 season, Sorenstam has her sights set on returning to the top this year before getting married in 2009 and having children at some point-she eventually will devote herself full-time to her design business.
"When I have the chance, I'm going to throw myself into it and do it right," she says. "I want to dedicate my time and want to represent it well. Just like you have to practice in golf, you have to practice this. If you asked me 10 years ago if someone would ask me to design a golf course, I don't know if that would have happened. Why would little me from a little country and a little town, why would I be asked to design a course? But now that I have, it's pretty cool and I want to do more."