Golf Hall of Fame: A Look at Five Who were Overlooked
By Bill Felber
Hall of Fame Overlooked Entrant #5: Liselotte Neumann
No, Annika Sorenstam wasn’t the first Swedish golfer to win a major championship. Nearly a full decade before Sorenstam’s emergence, Liselotte Neumann shot across the LPGA landscape as a 22-year-old phenom.
Just months after earning her Tour privileges, Neumann fired an opening 67 at the Women’s Open and held off veteran Patty Sheehan to claim the championship by three strokes. Largely for that victory, Neumann was named Rookie of the Year.
Across the two-decade career that followed, Neumann won another dozen tour events, including the British Open in 1994, seven years before the event gained major status. Beyond that one recognized major championship, her record shows runner-up performances at the 1992 and 1999 LPGA, the 1995 and 1997 duMaurier Classic, and the 2002 Kraft Nabisco.
She had seven other top-five finishes in majors.
She was also a major figure in the Solheim Cup competition, playing on six European teams between 1990 and 2000. In 2013 she captained the European Solheim Cup team to its first victory on American soil.
Next. What does skipping the Players mean for Tiger Woods at Augusta?. dark
Neumann’s -1.69 peak rating exceeds the peaks of Greg Norman, Davis Love and Johnny Miller, all Hall of Famers. Her weakness is a pedestrian +29.46 career rating, a byproduct of chasing tour paydays into her post-prime seasons.