Nominal vs present value
Local display: $11.7m · Rebased to 2024 USD via US CPI-U
How the total breaks down
LPGA prize money. First woman to top $2m in a single LPGA season, part of a record career money list lead.
Endorsements. Callaway's $1m-a-year clubmaker deal anchored a portfolio with Rolex, Mercedes and Kraft.
Impact 84
- Set the LPGA's single-season prize-money record and held the career mark
- Proved a women's golfer could sustain a Forbes-tracked endorsement portfolio
- Pushed Callaway and other equipment makers to invest seriously in the LPGA
Sorenstam's five-tournament winning streak in 2005 and record prize-money season gave the LPGA its clearest commercial argument yet: a dominant player could pull sponsor money on a scale previously reserved for the men's tour. Callaway's decision to keep paying her through 2010 signaled that equipment makers now saw women's golf as a long-term brand investment, not a marketing afterthought.
2005 was Sorenstam's career peak by any measure: five straight LPGA wins, a record season prize-money total, and her eighth Rolex Player of the Year award. Her Forbes total that year still sat well below Woods's, reflecting how much smaller the LPGA's television and sponsorship pool remained — but at $7.3 million she was, by a wide margin, women's golf's first Forbes-tracked commercial star, built on a Callaway deal she had signed years earlier and kept renewing.