Madelene Sagstrom Leads Olympic Women's Golf after Round 1

The 28-year-old Swede, who has one of golf's most inspiring stories, fired a bogey-free 66 to lead Nelly Korda and Aditi Ashok by a shot

TOKYO -- The leaderboard of the first round of the Olympic Women’s golf event is filled with many virtual unknowns, as the men’s was when Sepp Straka from Austria led last week after the first round at Kasumigaseki Country Club.

However, the leader after Wednesday’s first round was Madelene Sagstrom, a 28-year-old from Sweden who shot a 5-under 66 to take a one-shot lead over USA’s Nelly Korda and Aditi Ashok from India, who both shot 4-under 67’s.

Sagstrom's name may be familiar from her All-American career at LSU or her time as an LPGA Tour pro since 2017. But she is known for more than her golf. She is a survivor and a role model.

Sagstrom wrote this account in February of the years-long trauma she experienced after she was sexually abused at age 7 in Sweden.

Madelene Sagstrom’s story is hard to read, but important to hear. One in nine girls under the age of 18 are sexually abused at the hands of an adult.

She shares her story here in the spirit of helping others.

None of Us Are Alone | https://t.co/nFG6lw6mRZ#DriveOn pic.twitter.com/ilkJ5RZMAd

— LPGA (@LPGA) February 22, 2021

Sagstrom was preparing for a Symetra Tour event in 2016 when she shared her story with her mentor Robert Karlsson, a former Ryder Cupper and multiple winner on the European Tour. Karlsson had suggested she dig deeper to understand why she was having trouble controlling her emotions on the golf course. Telling her story to Karlsson "made me feel free," she wrote.

“He was a very big part of my team when I turned pro,” Sagstrom said of Karlsson. “I called him my glue he was kind of the thing that kept everything together. I asked him -- I mean he's got I don't even know how many years now of experience on Tour -- and just asking him for advice, what can I do to simplify and make the transition turning pro easier and just how can I handle this life. Because it's a very different life than most people live.”

That was the beginning of Sagstrom's slow climb out of an abyss that she’d been living in for 16 years.

“For me being free, has meant a lot both for my game and for myself and just accepting myself as a person and who I am has been a huge part of me enjoying this life and enjoying myself mostly, just being comfortable with who I am,” Sagstrom said in her post-round press conference. “I think that talking about things, trying to make it more not generalize it, but try to make it more common, try to make it more easy to talk about is, we can't do it enough.”

After the piece was published, Sagstrom spoke about her love of golf and its importance in her life. She wants her story to be more than just a survivor.

“I stand for so many more things than just sexual abuse in that sense, and I just feel like there's so much more to my life now than just golf, and I want to share that and just share that it's OK to what everybody says, it's OK not to be OK, but you can work through whatever you're going through, and I'm hoping that people can see my story as an inspiration to work through whatever you're going through, no matter in what way you choose to do it,” Sagstrom said in a Feb. 21 news conference. “But I'm definitely ready for it. I'm ready to be -- in getting a label, and I want to break out of that label because I'm so much more than just this story.”

There is a lot of golf left to be played in Japan's withering heat. But she may be able to add Olympic medalist to that story when the final putt drops.

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