Sorenstam launches one
New center helps her game as well
BOYLSTON -
Golf follows the trend in professional sports to use the instruments of technology to pick apart games and athletes' performances numerically, and then to stack them back up to get more.
Callaway opened its newest Performance Center at Cyprian Keyes Golf Club yesterday, and brought in longtime client Annika Sorenstam to cut the ribbon and give an exhibition. The launch monitor system has two high-speed cameras overhead that take six images of the clubhead at impact and 10 images of the golf ball. Within seconds, numbers appear on a flat screen reporting clubhead speed, ball speed, launch angle, spin rate, side angle, side spin, and club efficiency. The screen also shows a simulation of what the ball flight would look like.
Sorenstam has her own cache of numbers, sums that boggle: 84 career wins, including 71 on the LPGA Tour, 8 Rolex Player of the Year awards, 6 Vare Trophies, 8 Golf Writers' Female Player of the Year awards, 8 ESPY Awards, and a 59, the lowest score recorded in a round of tournament play (in 2001). She's won 10 major titles, she's already in the Hall of Fame, and she has pocketed more than $20 million in winnings, the all-time leader.
What could she possibly learn from a fancy performance-analysis system?
Well, in 2007, Sorenstam went a season without winning a tournament for the first time since 1994. A neck injury, eventually diagnosed as a ruptured/bulging disk, forced her to stop playing. While she was in the gym, rehabbing, rising star Lorena Ochoa was rearranging the furniture on the LPGA Tour to suit herself. The world No. 1 won eight tournaments, and has continued the pace this season, winning five of seven tournaments.
Sorenstam, who dominated the Tour the same way just a few years ago - winning 43 of 104 tournaments between 2001-05 - would not say that Ochoa's success was a motivator.
"She's playing great now and she's a great person - I wish her the very best," said Sorenstam. "I know what it's like, I had my run a few years ago. It's a fun time in your life. But nobody's stepping aside. We're going to do the best we can to stop her."
Sorenstam did allow that, at 37, she is not as driven as she once was. She is engaged, she has her golf academy, and she continues to follow an exacting preparation routine for tournaments.
"I think I have achieved so much more than I thought I could," she said. "I still enjoy the game, but not to the extent that I did then. I've been a professional now for 15 years and I've come a long ways. You start looking at other things that are important in life."
The injury, the time off, and the drop to No. 2 in the world rankings may have given Sorenstam a broader perspective, but she has returned to her rigorous workout schedule this year, and captured two tournaments already, the SBS Open in February and the Stanford Invitational in April.
Currently 47th on the Tour in average driving distance (256 yards), she wants to take advantage of any equipment advance that she can.
"I've actually spent a lot of time testing drivers because with my neck injury, I lost some strength and little bit of flexibility," she said. "I didn't want to lose distance, even though I had to."
Sorenstam said her clubhead speed used to top out at 102 miles per hour but has dropped to about 93-94.
"This is where you come down to the numbers, when you see your efficiency," she said. "In my profession, when you choose a driver, it's coming down to yards. You really want to make sure you get the most out of it and you want to make sure it's going to be precise. If I don't hit fairways, I cannot play."
