When Linn Grant pushed in the final putt to her big win, Annika Sörenstram and Henrik Stenson were standing in the background – and they were allowed to feel like winners, although they were actually duped in a spectacular way by a 22-year-old. Grant won the Scandinavian Mixed Tournament at Halmstad Golf Club in southern Sweden by an impressive nine shots, with Major winner Stenson struggling to keep up and finishing second by a wide margin. In the end, however, one of the great hopes for the future of European women’s golf was the trophy on the green, in a thoroughly historic moment.
Only in the second year will a mixed tournament take place in Sweden, in which women and men compete together and only the length of the court is different, for the first time a woman has won. The fact that golf hasn’t been inviting both sexes to the same event for a long time is highly questionable given how easy it is to create a level playing field – but at least the European men’s tour, the DP World Tour, has decided to hold the tournament in the long term record the calendar.
Linn Grant celebrated her first two victories as a professional at the beginning of the year.
(Photo: Naomi Baker/Getty Images)
Hosted by Sweden’s two most successful golfers in history, Sörenstram and Stenson, Grant said she was particularly excited in the first round when she was allowed to play in a group with the ten-time Major winner. All three also stand for a merger of the men’s tour with the Ladies European Tour, which is still looking for more attention and more sponsors. In the interview with the winner, Grant didn’t just talk about the sporting record of the past few days: “I hope it’s a great win. I hope that it will help the women and that more people will watch us and that we will get more sponsors.”
With her victory, Grant destroys a plan by the financially strong Saudis
Anyone who has watched Grant play golf in the past four days alone should be amazed. The Swede with Scottish roots – her grandfather James, also a golf pro, emigrated from Inverness to Helsingborg – has one of the most technically graceful shots in the golf world. Her successful amateur career and her time at the University of Arizona had already been promising, as did her first two victories as a professional earlier this year.
The slow-motion recordings of their technology went around the world at the weekend, and numerous experts in the USA commented on the videos – everyone with a golf club in their hands should take these sequences as an example, the comments said.
Linn Grant became a historic figure in her sport on the weekend of all days, becoming the first woman to win against men in a tournament in Europe’s top series, when golf was supposed to be dealing with a new Saudi Arabian golf series being coinciding in England had started. At least that was the plan the Saudis had invested billions in – and which has now been thwarted by a young golfer and her swing.