The meeting between Arnold Palmer and Annika Sorenstam at Bay Hill earlier this year, exclusively reported in Kingdom 13, generated enough opinions and reminiscences to fill a book. So rather than deny our readers access to much of this fascinating information, we have split the text into two. Here is the second article.

When arnold palmer passed the torch on to the likes of Jack Nicklaus, Lee Trevino and Tom Watson on the PGA Tour, the succession seemed in good hands. However, many players and officials were concerned at the time that public and commercial interest in tournament golf might wane.

Their fears proved unfounded, of course, but that has not stopped Annika Sorenstam’s contemporaries in the distaff game from juggling the same thoughts, especially at a time of worldwide financial crisis.

But during her recent get-together with Palmer at Bay Hill Club & Lodge, Sorenstam was quick to express the view that, despite still coming to terms with ‘life after Annika’, the LPGA Tour has a number of standard bearers to sustain public interest in women’s professional golf over the next few years.

And as for assuming Sorenstam’s long-time mantle as undisputed world No.1, the Mexican Lorena Ochoa remains the favorite to fulfill that role.

“Lorena is already No.1 and has been for a little while,” says Sorenstam. “I think she can stay there for as long as she decides to play, and she is bringing a different demographic to the LPGA Tour. Golf is growing a lot in Mexico because of her influence but it is a country where there’s a lot of room for growth. Paula Creamer has been around for five years or so but I know she’s a great player. Suzann Pettersen is also a force to be reckoned with—very athletic and a long hitter.

“With these players at the top, I don’t see a lot changing over the next three or four years, though we will see an Asian player get to No 1 eventually, especially with around 50 players now on Tour from Korea alone—more than any other country apart from the US. But this should be welcomed as it’s important golf becomes more of a global game, with more TV rights and opening new markets.”

Palmer is particularly impressed with Pettersen. “We see Suzann a lot here at Bay Hill. She’s a member and likes to practice here. But I like to follow the LPGA Tour because Charlie Meecham, the former commissioner, is a friend of mine and we talk about what’s going to happen from time to time.

“I haven’t thought about having an LPGA tournament here at Bay Hill—I have my hands full with the Invitational, so I can’t see that happening while I’m around.”

With prizemoney exploding, one huge development over the past decade or so—post-Tiger in other words—has been the top players’ improved fitness. Palmer acknowledges that fitness levels were lower in his day, but feels the players didn’t have the time on their hands to work out as they do today. “When I first came out on Tour many of the pros were based at golf clubs and most of the tournaments they played were in the winter because they would be busy at their clubs in the summer. Now the guys do nothing but play tournaments full time and physical education is a big part of their program.”

Sorenstam believes that more rigorous fitness regimes have been essential as LPGA courses have lengthened. “The distances players hit the ball today bears no resemblance to 15 years ago. In fact the increase has been big just in the last five years. On the men’s tours, only a few could hit it further than 300 yards then whereas now everyone has to do that just to compete.

“On the LPGA Tour, our courses used to measure no more than 6,200 yards when I started out but the norm is more like 6,700 yards—an increase of 500 yards. So distance is important, but the way to combat players’ greater length isn’t to make courses any longer but to toughen them up—making the greens faster and firmer is something I very much favor.”

However, Palmer feels that enhanced fitness isn’t the only reason for the widespread long hitting in the game today. “Reining the ball in is going to come in eventually—Jack [Nicklaus] and I both feel the ball needs to be slowed down,” he says. “You can’t keep making courses longer and longer —there isn’t enough land to keep churning them out at 8,000-plus yards. I think the move back to V grooves is going to have an effect. At the moment the long drivers don’t mind driving into the rough because their square grooves enable them to get backspin when they hit it out of the rough—that is one of my major complaints.

“Going back to V grooves will restore the skill needed to play a controlled shot out of rough. That’s one of the things we concentrate on for our event here at Bay Hill—our rough isn’t thick as such, but the ball sinks down in it, even if it’s only three or four inches, and then you can’t get backspin out of it.”

Even though she will not be around to benefit from the rule change on Tour from 1 January 2010, Sorenstam can see its virtue. “It takes more talent to hit shots out of rough with V grooves than square grooves, so you might again have people playing courses the way Tiger played Hoylake in the 2006 [British] Open when he hardly touched his driver but demonstrated wonderful control over his long irons and approach play.”

The desire to innovate for the good of the game is rarely far from the surface with either Palmer or Sorenstam. The 39-year-old Swede has done her own share of innovating in her time—not least when she teed it up alongside the men on the PGA Tour in the Bank of America Colonial Invitational at Fort Worth, Texas, in 2003, and missed the cut by one shot. “I wanted to challenge myself at Colonial, and I followed it with one of my best years,” she says. “But we have a great Tour on the LPGA and I didn’t want to do it again after that.”

Palmer agrees the experience in isolation can only have been beneficial. “Annika did it right but if it happened consistently it wouldn’t help either Tour,” he said. Sorenstam certainly feels that playing too often with the men can be harmful to a player’s game. “I don’t think the Tours are keen on it, but sometimes the sponsors want it to happen—to generate more revenue and perhaps create an extra buzz around a tournament,” she added. “Only time will tell what effect it’s had on Michelle Wie’s career, but now she’s earned her [LPGA] card she seems to have a different attitude and could make a great impact on the Tour. She made a good start to 2009 but needs to do things the right way.”

The presence of the leading men and women at certain events during the year—as happens at the four Grand Slam tennis tournaments—is worth experimenting with, according to both of them. “I’d love to see the 70 top women and the 70 top men play alongside each other once or twice a year on the same course, off different tees obviously and in effect in different tournaments. A lot of spectators would want to come to watch and television would be very interested as well,” says Sorenstam.

“A mixed tournament would be very good and I think it would work very well. The men and the women don’t see much of each other generally,” added Palmer, whose role in popularizing golf was mirrored on the LPGA Tour by Nancy Lopez. Their association was cemented when their equipment companies were closely connected from a marketing and distribution standpoint during the 1980s and ’90s.

“Mr. Palmer knows Nancy a lot better than I do,” says Sorenstam. “But when she was at her peak as a player in the 1970s and ’80s she would catch everyone’s eye. She had charisma and was so friendly; naturally she brought a lot of attention to the game. She was very human and emotional, often laughing or crying. But I suppose she was on her way out when I arrived on Tour and a lot of people treated me as if I was the new Nancy Lopez. But I’m not Nancy and that was hard for me. I was not there to replace her, I was there to be myself.”

Palmer was quick to pick up on this point. “I played quite a bit with Nancy, and she was certainly different to what we’d been used to—on the men’s Tour as well as the ladies,” he said. “She was gregarious and outgoing. But I agree with Annika. You can’t have two people who are alike and it is ridiculous to expect someone to be an exact copy of someone else. Take me and Jack Nicklaus for instance. We are friends but we’re not alike—we are completely different people.”

Many of the LPGA Tour’s next generation of superstars will hail from unfamiliar territories. “Europe won’t grow as a golf market as fast as Asia over the next few years,” says Palmer. “Japan and Korea are pretty well established, but China will be a major entity and there are a lot of courses in places like Thailand and Malaysia. But the growth won’t just be in Asia. South America is potentially a big market for golf—especially Mexico and Brazil. We’ve talked about Lorena Ochoa, but the arrival of this young man from Colombia, Camilo Villegas, is going to have a big impact on this region as well.”

Sorenstam, for the time being, sees Asia as the powerhouse. “Both the LPGA and Ladies’ European Tour have tournaments in China and the Far East, so that gives you an indication of how the game is growing out there. I don’t think it will be long before China has its own Tour as the players get better all the time and more courses get built.”

That said, perhaps the Ryder Cup style concept behind the Solheim Cup series between the U.S. and Europe which began less than 20 years ago is already outdated. “It’s been a great concept which has generated a lot of interest in the women’s game and produced some very exciting moments,” says Sorenstam. “But it’s getting a little one-sided in favor of the U.S., perhaps in the way the Ryder Cup was back in the 1960s and ’70s when Mr Palmer was playing.

“For that reason we need a greater range of players to choose from, especially as the LPGA Tour is much stronger than the Ladies’ European Tour. But if we included players from places where the women’s game is now quite strong—Australia, Mexico, Korea, for instance—to create a Rest of the World team, then the balance would tilt too much the other way. The Lexus Cup between Asia and the Rest of the World which we stage at the end of the LPGA season seems to produce some very even contests. I was captain of the international team last year when the contest wasn’t decided until the last hole of the last match.”

This is no longer an issue on the PGA Tour. “We cater for the needs of all the top players in the men’s game with the Presidents and Ryder Cups, and there’s no need to merge them,” says Palmer. “The principle is not to ignore anyone when it comes to team golf—we want them all to have a chance to play in a team if they’re good enough regardless of where they come from.” This philosophy of fair play towards all who orbit Planet Golf sums up the generosity of these two greats of the game—and explains why both are viewed with uncompromising affection by their legions of fans.

Long live the King and Queen!