Rachel Heck was annoyed. For two straight weeks, the former Stanford golfer and current lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force Reserves had been receiving texts from an unknown number. The unknown sender kept asking Heck if she was free for a chat, but, thinking the messages were spam, she ignored them.
Then she received a message from Rob Ohno, president and CEO of the Annika Foundation. Ohno told Heck that Annika Sörenstam, the 72-time LPGA Tour winner with 10 major championships, was trying to contact her.
“I realized I’d been ghosting Annika for two weeks and I was just mortified,” Heck said. “I don’t think I’d ever been so mortified in my life, I was ghosting the GOAT of golf.”
Sörenstam told Heck that she would be the inaugural winner of the Annika Inspiration Award, which celebrates women who are using their influence, passion, and leadership to inspire others beyond their competitive achievements in golf. Heck was an NCAA individual champion and part of two NCAA Championship-winning teams at Stanford, but professional golf wasn’t for her. Battling injuries and depression since high school, Heck found her home in the Air Force.
“I think it’s just incredible that they’re highlighting that and they’re setting an example for young girls for whom golf is not the end-all be-all,” Heck said. “You can work at golf with all your heart and it will give you those skills to tackle any challenge.”
Sörenstam says Heck is deserving of the inaugural award, which was announced Wednesday.
“She is the perfect example of how success in sport can be a platform for greater purpose,” she said. “She’s had an amazing golf career, but what makes her truly special is the way she is using the platform that golf has given her to serve our country and help others.”
Like many young girls, Heck grew up idolizing Sörenstam. To win an award named after her favorite player is a true honor, she said.
“If you would have told me when I was a little bitty girl, that one day Annika would even know my name, I think I would have cried,” she said. “It is surreal.”
Heck, along with her older sister, Abby, and younger sister, Anna, grew up on the golf course. What drew her to the game was the same thing that attracted her to Stanford’s Air Force Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program.
“I just love things that are so mentally stimulating and so difficult,” Heck said. “And I love the challenge of it.”
Heck spent nearly all day, every day on the course honing her game, sacrificing social events such as sleepovers and summer camps. She had a clear goal.
“I remember when I was 4 years old, people used to ask, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’” Heck said. “I would always say professional golfer and everyone kind of laughed at me, and they thought it was cute. But in my mind, it was just never a question.”
In 2017, at age 15, Heck qualified for the U.S. Women’s Open at Trump National Golf Club in New Jersey. The youngest player in the field, she did more than just show up – she made the cut and finished T33.
Her path to professional golf was on track, but a back injury during her junior year of high school changed her life.
“Without golf I realized I truly didn’t know who I am,” Heck said. “Having to put the clubs away I had a full-on identity crisis, like, what am I without this game?”
Heck said she became depressed. Even when she returned to golf a few months later during her senior year, it wasn’t the same. Some days she didn’t want to get out of bed or do anything at all.
In 2019, during the fall of her senior year, Heck represented the United States in the Junior Solheim Cup at Gleneagles in Scotland. As part of the experience, the junior U.S. team met with that year’s American Solheim Cup team, which included players such as Lexi Thompson and Nelly Korda.
“She spoke about what it means to represent your country and I was just starry-eyed, jaw on the ground. It just revived me.” – Rachel Heck
While her teammates flocked to the professional golfers, Heck wasn’t having fun. She says she was at her low point and didn’t even want to be there. But then a guest speaker took the stage: Nora Tyson, a retired U.S. Navy veteran who commanded the Third Fleet from 2015-2017. Tyson was the first woman to command a Navy ship fleet.
“She spoke about what it means to represent your country and I was just starry-eyed, jaw on the ground,” Heck said. “It just revived me.”
After Tyson’s speech, it was time for the team picture. While Heck’s teammates rushed to be next to their favorite players, Heck went straight to Tyson.
“She looked me in the eye and said, ‘If you’re looking for a sign, this is it,’” Heck said.
She’d found her calling. As a Stanford freshman, Heck started the four-year ROTC program. She said that when she started the program, she didn’t have plans to finish it. Having to balance golf, academics and the military, Heck wanted to make sure she liked the work first. And as it turned out, she loved it.
“Golf is so individual,” Heck said. “Being a part of the military representing and fighting for your country, you’re such a small part of something so much bigger than yourself.”
Her golf was going very well, too. As a freshman, she won six tournaments, including the first NCAA individual title in Stanford women’s golf history. She also won the Annika Award, which is given to the best female Division I golfer. Heck was also part of the winning 2021 U.S. Curtis Cup team and an NCAA Championship team with Stanford as a sophomore.
But Heck subsequently encountered injury and illness, forcing her to miss much of her junior and senior seasons. During her senior year, Stanford coach Anne Walker sat her down after yet another unpromising MRI on her shoulder.
“She’s like, ‘Hey Rachel, you’ve had an amazing career. Why don’t you just call it,’” Heck recalled. “I think it was hard for other people to see me just in so much pain and kind of miserable all the time.”
By now Heck had realized that life as a professional golfer was not for her, but she’d worked too hard to simply give up. She wanted to play. She wanted to win.
And she did. Playing in the anchor match of the 2024 NCAA Division I Women’s Golf Championship, Heck defeated UCLA’s Kate Villegas to clinch Stanford’s second NCAA Championship in three years and third overall.
“I still can’t believe that happened,” Heck said. “That felt like a storybook ending. I couldn’t have written it any better myself.”
After graduating from Stanford last year, Heck worked as an analyst for investment firm KKR until June of this year, leaving to pursue more Air Force assignments.
“That’s where my heart was and I wanted to give that everything I had,” she said.
While Heck hasn’t played much golf since graduating from Stanford, she hopes to play more in the future and qualify for USGA championships. But her priority is the military, and she hopes her work leads her to exploring places such as Africa, Europe and Asia.
Heck works as a public affairs officer in the Air Force. She focuses on telling the public what the Air Force is doing and why. She maintains media and community relationships, but one of her favorite parts is telling the stories of other military members.
“I get to go play reporter and interview people and ask about their lives and what they do and what their work means to them,” Heck said.
While Heck hasn’t played much golf since graduating from Stanford, she hopes to play more in the future and qualify for USGA championships. But her priority is the military, and she hopes her work leads her to exploring places such as Africa, Europe and Asia.
“The military as opposed to the LPGA is my chosen method to see the world,” Heck said.
Heck’s chosen path is a great example of what the Annika Inspiration Award seeks to highlight, Sörenstam said.
“It is so important for all these talented young ladies to realize that there is a lot out there for them,” she said. “If we are honest about it, it’s very hard to make it as a professional golfer. Not all our alumnae will play professionally, and that is just fine. We just want them to work hard in whatever profession they choose and to be happy.”