On 21 February 2006, Annika Sörenstam of Sweden became the first woman to top the Rolex Women’s World Golf Rankings. The inaugural list, released from Daytona Beach, Florida, finally gave the women’s game a single, unified measure of supremacy across all tours.
The numbers left no room for argument. Sörenstam entered the record books with an average of 18.43 points, a figure that dwarfed the field. Paula Creamer, the American placed second, held 9.54 points, while Michelle Wie sat third on 9.13. The gap was a precise reflection of a two-year run in which Sörenstam had collected 21 worldwide victories.
Five tours, one definitive list
The rankings were sanctioned by the LPGA, LET, JLPGA, KLPGA, ALPG, and the Ladies’ Golf Union. Developed at the World Congress of Women’s Golf in 2004, the system calculated a rolling average over 104 weeks, with a minimum of 15 events required. The launch made tour membership invisible and answered an old question with arithmetic.
“The Rolex Rankings make nationality, tour membership and amateur or professional status virtually invisible,” LPGA Commissioner Carolyn Bivens said that day. “Providing a definitive answer to the question, ‘Who are the best women golfers in the world?’”
A reign foretold by the record books
Sörenstam was already a Hall of Fame inductee, voted in while still active in 2003. She owned eight Rolex Player of the Year awards, had completed the career grand slam, and remained the only woman to shoot 59 in a professional round. The debut ranking merely added a formal census to her decade of dominance.
She held the No. 1 spot through the full season, finishing 2006 with three LPGA wins including the U.S. Women’s Open. Her year-end average of 15.24 points still led Lorena Ochoa, whose own 158-week reign would begin only after Sörenstam departed the summit.
On that February morning, the mathematics of the new system simply confirmed what fairways had already shown for years. Sweden’s quiet champion stood alone, and the first page of the Rolex Rankings was written in her name.