Suzann Pettersen plans to lean into her experience as a Solheim Cup captain as she looks to assemble another successful team at her new women-only athlete agency Voxa.
The Norwegian, a winner of two majors, is launching Voxa with five fellow golfers already on board, including European colleague Carlota Ciganda and current world No3 Ruoning Yin.
Ciganda was Pettersen’s star player when Europe retained the Solheim Cup at Finca Cortesin two years ago and the 44-year-old wants her agency to stand out for its team-like approach.
“I’ve taken a lot of the experience from the Solheim, helping facilitate for the players to really perform their best, whatever that may be, because everyone’s different,” Pettersen tells City AM.
“But I think it’s very important that every voice is heard. Voxa comes from Vox, the Latin word for voice. So it’s the storytelling as well. And I think this is a great time to come into women’s sports and kind of disrupt the world a little bit, shake it, stir it.
“It’s always been a dream of mine, doing something like this to impact the game even more than just from a playing perspective. This is a world that I’ve been living and breathing throughout my career. I have a fair share of experience, good and bad, and I always had this vision of how things could be done differently.
“Sometimes you feel like a very small fish in a big tank in the big sporting world. And this is where Voxa wants to be a different kind of partner in golf. Every voice counts, we’re going to really emphasise on the individual here in a team aspect.
“I would never have done this if I didn’t feel like we could make a difference in the ecosystem.”
Voxa is a partnership between Pettersen and 54, a commercial agency best known for its work helping to launch LIV Golf. Along with Ciganda and Yin, they have already signed up fellow national No1s Gaby Lopez of Mexico, Shannon Tan of Singapore and Malaysia’s Ashley Lau.
“My strength is obviously performance, that’s kind of my background,” says Pettersen, whose role will also include “recruiting on the performance strategy side, building the team that supports every player on board, and then we have a fantastic team kind of behind us that does every other aspect that comes with player management.”
Pettersen open to taking Voxa beyond golf
Pettersen hopes to grow Voxa’s roster of talent, not just with established names but also some stars of the future, but is mindful of retaining a Solheim Cup team feel.
“There’s a question of, how many would you like? How many do you really want to be able to really keep that close connection and team atmosphere?” she says.
“I think we were off to a great start with our five athletes so far. What is the ideal number? That’s impossible for me to say right here now, but I want to keep that closeness to everyone.
“We’ve been fortunate to sign the No1s in respective countries as of now, but we’re also going to look at potential new talents coming up. We don’t have a set system of how this is going to work. But to start, it was a good number.
“I know them personally. They know me. They know the values I stand for. Some of them have been under my leadership at the Solheim. They know I’ll always have their back.
“So there’s a lot of trust and confidence in each other here to start, and I think that’s an important asset that we need to keep having within this team.”
While Voxa is launching with a portfolio of golfers, Pettersen insists she is not going to limit the agency to one sport.
“I think starting with the industry you know best is quite natural. But I would not sit here and say we’ll never move into other sports, because it’s quite transparent,” she says.
“We want Voxa to help bring more emerging voices into golf or into sport globally, especially emphasising empowering women. So let’s hope our vision is going to help more awareness, a more global perspective of women’s athletes, and let us be a part of that ecosystem.”