Linn Grant scores a three-game win at The Annika for second LPGA title

BELLEAIR, Fla. – Sweden’s Linn Grant was so in control of her game that she played the final 52 holes without a bogey, a streak that ended on Sunday’s final hole when it no longer mattered. She closed with a 5-under 65 for a three-shot win at The Annika.

It was Grant’s second LPGA title and the second time she received a trophy from Swedish great and tournament host Annika Sorenstam. Grant won the Scandinavian Mixed in Sweden when Sorenstam and Henrik Stenson were co-hosts.

“You made this course look easy. It’s not easy,” Sorenstam told her on the 18th green.

That’s how it must have felt for Grant, who was never under much stress. She finished at 19-under 261 and had a chance to set the tournament record until a bogey on the final hole, her first since her opening hole Friday.

Jennifer Kupcho birdied the first hole to take the lead, but only briefly. Grant birdied the next hole and never followed up again. The Swede had to make a 15-foot birdie putt to maintain a one lead through five holes, and then she seized control on the par-3 ninth.

Kupcho made her second bogey of the front nine, and Grant rolled in a 10-foot birdie putt to extend the lead to three shots. No one came closer the rest of the way.

Kupcho also closed with a 65.

“I’m glad she played well because I think that really pushed me to play better,” Grant said. “And overall I had the thought that whoever wins will have a very good job.”

Mexico’s Gaby Lopez birdied four of her last six holes for a 65 to finish third.

Brooke Matthews also came out on top by two points. She hit a hole-in-one with a 9-iron from 450 feet on the 12th hole to win a two-year lease on a Lamborghini Huracán. Two holes later, Matthews chipped for Eagle and all those great shots mattered.

It added a 65 – a card with scores of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 – to finish in ninth place, giving her enough points to advance to the top 60 of the Race to the CME Globe. That qualifies her for next week’s season-ending CME Group Tour Championship, where the winner will get $4 million.

“It was wild,” Matthews said. “All week I thought: ‘I want to win the Lamborghini.’ …I just saw it bounce. I still can’t believe it. I blacked out. I can’t wait to see it on film because I still can’t really remember it.

Nataliya Guseva had her own big moment. She holed with a gap wedge from 109 yards on the final hole for birdie – she had to lie out of a fairway bunker – giving her a 68 that moved the Russian into the top 60.

Lucy Li also continues to next week along the coast in Naples. Her birdie on the final hole gave her a 66 and moved her up 13 places to No. 58.

Grant was running out of time to extend her winning streak every year somewhere in the world until 2020, when she was still an amateur and won twice in the Nordic Golf League. She has won titles on the LPGA, Ladies European Tour, LET Access Series, Ladies Sunshine Tour, Nordic Golf League and even the European Tour, which co-sanctioned the Scandinavian Mixed.

Defending champion Nelly Korda, a three-time winner at Pelican Golf Club, started six shots behind and couldn’t keep up with Grand. She closed with a 69 and tied for 15th.