Annika’s Driving Ambition

When people describe Annika Sorenstam, they say she’s consistent, efficient, mechanical, driven. Makes you wonder: Are they talking about the world’s No. 1 female golfer or a Volvo? And when you meet her, you also wonder whether this nice grinning woman in the lime-green golf shirt really could be a sporting machine.

Then you see those biceps, and you figure she could tear your arm off and hit a ball 200 yds. with it. “Oh, and robotic,” she adds with a smile. “A lot of people say I’m robotic.”

A better word may be bionic–women’s golf hasn’t seen a player so dominant in decades, if ever. This still means that a lot of people haven’t seen her at all, given the modest visibility of the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA). That will change this week when the five-time Player of the Year and her sublime swing take on Phil Mickelson, Ernie Els and other PGA stars at the Colonial invitational in Fort Worth, Texas. She will become the first woman to play in a PGA tournament since Babe Didrikson Zaharias in 1945.

Sorenstam’s challenge has sparked another loud round of 19th hole, his-and-hers trash talk in a season already spiked by debate about gender equity. When the guns of Augusta started firing–remember Hootie and Martha?–earlier this year, most of the PGA players tried to jump into the nearest hole to avoid the subject.

This time, though, PGA player Vijay Singh teed off on Sorenstam, saying “I hope she misses the cut”–that is, gets knocked out halfway through the four-round tournament. Although Singh begged for a mulligan, insisting he was misunderstood, it was music to USA and CBS, which will be adding extra coverage to follow Sorenstam, Tiger-like, in what until then had been just another golf tournament. And Singh might be expressing the anxiety the gentlemen may feel when, come Sunday, some of them could be in the running for the First PGA Pro to Get His Butt Kicked by a Skirt trophy.

Sorenstam, 32, insists that going up against the boys has nothing to do with blazing a feminist trail in men’s sports. It’s about one woman, her game and her purely selfish motives. “I would not have gotten all this attention if I were not a good golfer,” she says. “This is a way to push myself to another level. This is for myself.”

That self is an absolute perfectionist. “Not just in golf but in everything I do,” says Sorenstam, sitting in the plush lounge of her home course in Orlando, Fla. Friends and coaches talk of how when Annika was a teen, other girls would practice one hour after a round and she would put in three; or the time Annika had the flu, threw up on the course and still won. Sorenstam’s strength is “her intrinsic motivation,” says coach and mentor Pia Nilsson. “Her ability to look honestly at what she can improve is absolutely the best.” The evidence: her ripped physique–building more strength has helped her add more than 20 yds. to her drive–and a better short game, which have turned her from a rising star into a golfing supernova.

Sorenstam, a math lover and self-confessed geek, says “the numbers always tell the truth.” For 16 years she has kept a spreadsheet with all her vital golfing stats–scoring, putting, driving. In 1987 “my scoring average was 77,” she notes. Last year it was an LPGA record 68.70. (Tiger Woods’ average was 68.56.) “It’s fun to see the progress,” she says. Despite the presence of phenoms such as Karrie Webb and Se Ri Pak, Sorenstam has owned the past two seasons. In 2001 she won 11 tournaments and shot a record-low round of 59; last year she won 13 times, matching a mark set by Hall of Famer Mickey Wright in 1963. “I have days when everything falls into place, but then I think, ‘Why can’t I do this more often?'”

Her perfectionism stems from her hypercompetitive childhood in the small Swedish town of Bro. Her parents Tom and Gunilla were avid athletes. Though they never pushed Annika, who wanted to be a fighter pilot, or her sister Charlotta, “we were the little boys they never got,” says Charlotta, also a pro golfer. The girls played soccer, tennis, badminton and random games that the family invented.

The sisters didn’t take to golf until their teens. Annika made the Swedish junior team at 16, but “if someone had said, ‘Who will be the next star here?'” says coach Nilsson, “I never would have said Annika had a better chance than any of the others.” She did win a scholarship to play at the University of Arizona, where she blossomed in the year-round sunshine, winning the NCAA title as a freshman and the world amateur crown as a sophomore. In 1994 she turned pro and was named Rookie of the Year. In ’95 she won her first title, a big one–the U.S. Women’s Open.

She couldn’t have practiced for what followed. Suddenly Annika the Silent Swede had to be Annika the Swedish Celebrity, giving interview after interview, making public appearances and smiling for photos until it hurt. “I freaked out. I was so mentally tired,” she says. “I said, ‘I’m not here to show up like a Barbie doll.'”

But now that she’s playing against all those titanium-equipped Ken dolls, she knows the media circus “will be unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before.” Can she even take her self-imposed pressure? She has shanked before. Her 43 pro wins include four majors, but she has also blown up big time. In 1997, as two-time U.S. Open defending champion, she missed the cut. Last year she did it at the British Open. “I have a tendency to want it too much,” she says. “Sometimes I think about Sunday.”

Of the nine men’s tournaments she was invited to, she chose the Colonial because the course favors shotmakers, not ball whackers. At 7,080 yds.–with one par five that stretches 609 yds.–the Colonial is still 700 yds. longer than the typical LPGA setup. But it is also the kind of classic course Sorenstam loves, with narrow, tree-lined fairways, deep, ball-eating bunkers and small, slick greens. “Length is not the most important thing,” says Colonial head pro Dow Finsterwald Jr. “This is a position golf course”–a plus for Sorenstam, one of the most accurate hitters in the game. She’ll have to hope her straight shooting will make up for her power disadvantage–her current 275.4-yd. average drive would rank her 159th on the PGA tour.

Against a player like Singh, she’ll be giving up 20 to 25 yds. on each drive, leaving her with longer, more difficult second shots. On some long par fours, she’ll be hitting a harder-to-control 6-iron when Singh will be hitting a wedge. On par fives, she’ll be at a particular disadvantage, since the men can reach the green in two. She’ll need three. Her goal is to shoot even par and to make the cut, which last year was at three over. “If I don’t succeed,” she says, “people will say, ‘I told you so.’ What’s changed?”

That sounds a bit disingenuous considering the frenzy she’s creating, but Sorenstam is sticking to her Scandinavian stoicism. “I’m very competitive, but at the end, golf is just a game,” she says. Oh yeah? Just tell that to the boys. –With reporting by Meredith Lennox/London, Adam Pitluk/Fort Worth and Sonja Steptoe/Los Angeles