The First Fifty-Nine

Annika Sorenstam began the second round of the 2001 Standard Register Ping at Moon Valley Country Club in Phoenix with little sign of what was coming, then birdied eight holes in a row on the front nine, a run that alone would have been a career highlight for most professionals.

She reached the turn in 27 and kept the round going, aware by the back nine exactly what score was in reach and, by her own account, deliberately not letting herself calculate it hole by hole. A final birdie sealed a 13-under-par 59, the first sub-60 round in LPGA Tour history, on a course and under conditions with no suggestion of a gimme.

Sorenstam went on to win the tournament outright, but the 59 itself became the number permanently associated with her career, a mark still unmatched in LPGA competition more than two decades later and one of the defining single rounds in the history of either the men's or women's professional game.