You've just had one of the best years of any golfer ever. Now what do you do? If you're Annika Sorenstam, you raise the bar. By Ron Sirak Golf For Women Magazine Annika Sorenstam eases into a chair at Trump International Golf Club, in West Palm Beach, Florida. It is late November, and she has just won the season-ending ADT Championship, beating Rachel Teske by three strokes. A low rush of air escapes from her lungs, and she closes her eyes. Exhaustion drapes her body like a tailored suit. "I'm fried," she says. And with good reason. In a mad rush to try and win more tournaments in a single season than any woman in history, Sorenstam, 32, played the final eight LPGA events in 2002, as well as the Solheim Cup. Though she fell short of Mickey Wright's 1963 record of 13 LPGA victories in one year, Sorenstam won an extraordinary 11 times (out of 23 starts), beating her personal record of eight wins, set in 2001. Considered along with the two tournaments she won overseas last year, her record of 13 wins in 25 events is the most successful season of any golfer -- female or male -- in four decades. Related articles Add this: Over the past three years, no golfer in the world has had a better winning percentage than Sorenstam. No one. With 24 victories in 71 LPGA events over that span, she won 33.8 percent of the tournaments she entered. In the same period, Tiger Woods' 19 wins in 57 starts on the PGA Tour earned him a winning percentage of 33.3. Not bad. But second-best. One would certainly have understood if Sorenstam had put down her clubs after the ADT and taken a long and well-deserved break. But scarcely two weeks later, she arrives at a photo shoot in Orlando, beaming from ear to ear. "Look!" she proclaims, proudly holding up her hands to display a ridge of fresh calluses running across both palms. Clearly, she has been hard at work in the weight room. "My trainer wants me to lift [weights] without gloves," she explains, "so I can feel the steel and be more in touch with the workout." Sorenstam's weariness has evaporated. Asked if she is thinking at all about retirement in the near future, she laughs. "No, no, no!" she says. So the game is still fun? Her eyes light up. "I love it!" For Sorenstam, a new season means new goals -- more ambitious ones, usually. As good as her 2002 season was, in her mind it could have been better. "If I had a failure," she allows, "it was the British Open." Shockingly, she missed the cut at Turnberry, shooting 73-77, a disappointing six over par, in the first two rounds. "That kept it from being a superb, superb year," she says. In 2003, she is determined to bring home the British Open title, which has eluded her so far, and to regain the U.S. Women's Open crown, which she won in 1995 and 1996. Her run at an unprecedented third consecutive Women's Open title ended in 1997 when she missed the cut at Pumpkin Ridge, near Portland, Oregon. This summer, the Open returns to Pumpkin Ridge, and Sorenstam has the event in her sights. "I'd like to improve on my record there," she says. Sorenstam's is a particularly Swedish form of passion, a fire shrouded in so much reserve that its heat isn't measured in demonstrative acts of celebration but simply in success. As a child in growing up in Bro, a town outside Stockholm, she competed in Sweden's junior tennis program and idolized a young man with flowing locks whose success on the court had made him a national hero. "I wanted to be Bj?n Borg," she admits. Though she didn't thrive in the program, something had been ignited. Here was a determined athlete who was willing to saturate ideas with the sweat needed to make them grow. It was at Bro-B?sta Golf Club in Stockholm that fire met steel. Sorenstam's parents, Tom, a 7-handicap, and Gunilla, a 12-handicap, were avid players, and Annika and her younger sister, Charlotta, were raised around the game. By the time Annika was 16, she was working with Henri Reis, a regional coach in the highly successful Swedish youth golf program. (Reis still teaches her.) Soon afterward, Sorenstam came under the strategic direction of Pia Nilsson, the Swedish national golf coach. Nilsson preached what she called "Vision 54" -- the notion that an extraordinary round of 18 birdies is possible. That idealistic vision was the ultimate expression of Nilsson's essentially pragmatic philosophy, which could be boiled down to two words: Set goals. "Pia taught me to do that," Sorenstam explains. "We set long-term goals and we set short-term goals." Some of those goals were modest for a player of Sorenstam's talent: breaking 90, or breaking 80. Others seemed superhuman, like Vision 54 itself. Nilsson's goal-focused philosophy did not come easily. "In the beginning, it was really tough because I didn't understand what that all meant," Sorenstam admits. "But in the last few years, it has been very helpful." Having set and met the moderate goals actually steadied Sorenstam when she shot her record 59 at Moon Valley in Phoenix two years ago. "I remembered breaking 90 and 80 and 70 for the first time," she says. "So it just seemed that breaking 60 was next. I wasn't nervous. And I'll be even more relaxed next time. To Do List Here are the goals Sorenstam has set for herself in 2003: 1. Lower scoring average 2. Move into top 3 in putting 3. Shape tee shot better, especially left to right 4. Win U.S. Open 5. Win British Open "It's very important," Sorenstam says of her goal-setting. "And why is it important? Because that motivates me, and that pushes me. If I can visualize something, then it is easier for me to work there. But if I just said, 'Hey, I want to be a better player,' well, what does that mean? I need to see things. Goals are things I can understand, I can touch." Butch Harmon, who has worked with top players from Greg Norman to Woods, says one of the most common mistakes recreational golfers make is to practice without purpose. "They tend to go to the range, warm up with some irons and then whale away with the driver," Harmon says. "There is no plan to what they are doing." Sorenstam is all about plans. She sets goals before each season. Specific goals. Difficult goals. And she constructs her practice routine around the areas she feels need the most improvement. At the 1999 U.S. Women's Open at Old Waverly, in Mississippi, Sorenstam missed the cut with stiff-armed, jerky putting that was painful to watch. The next winter, she spent six weeks practicing putting two hours a day, one hour every morning and another every afternoon, and hit no other golf shots. "She's very disciplined and very organized in the way she works on her golf game and runs her whole life," says Liselotte Neumann, a fellow Swede and LPGA Tour pro. "She's always been a hard worker, but she's able to get the most out of that work. She sets her goals and doesn't give up until she reaches them." Sorenstam and Reis, the only swing coach she's ever had, tailor her practice routine to meet each year's aims. Going into 2002, the list -- printed out from the laptop into which she pours the details of every round she plays -- was dominated by the short game. The six headings read: Rolling Chip, Pitch-Chip, Pitch, Putting, Swing and Bunker. While chipping and putting are always a priority for Sorenstam -- when you are fourth in driving distance, fifth in driving accuracy and first in greens hit in regulation, there seems little else to improve upon -- Reis has other goals for her in 2003. "She can get better working the ball both ways, especially left to right," he says. "Sometimes she gets out ahead, and it goes too far right. Also, we are still working on getting a better turn. And we have been trying to get the left-hand grip stronger." Sorenstam sees the logic. "If I can shape the ball better on some doglegs where I now hit a 4-wood off the tee, I will be able to hit driver and bend the ball around the corner," she says. "That will leave me closer to the green." This from the woman who is possibly the best driver of the golf ball in LPGA history: No one as long has ever been as accurate, and no one as accurate has ever been as long. That she is still looking to shorten the course shows how relentless she is. "She's never satisfied," says Juli Inkster, who closed with a 66 to steal the U.S. Open from Sorenstam last year. "She really believes she can do anything." Two years ago, Sorenstam added a grueling, five-day-a-week exercise program that for the past year has been directed by trainer Kai Fusser. Since she started the program, her average drive has increased from 252.3 yards (26th on tour) to 265.6 yards (fourth). "Some of the players are getting babied," Fusser says of the workout programs of other LPGA players. "You have to treat them like athletes. Annika is the perfect client. She is not easy to break." To improve the balance of Sorenstam's swing, Fusser has her kneel on a giant ball or stand on the ball and do exercises. The 5'6" Swede can bench-press 150 pounds and squat 300. "And she can get one-third stronger," Fusser asserts. While some detractors have whispered the dirty word steroids to explain her gains in strength, Sorenstam's husband, David Esch, says it is simply the result of hard work. "She takes a carbohydrate-and-protein-replacement drink called Physique that's made by Shaklee," Esch says. "It helps her body recover faster from workouts so she can work out more." Reis has his own explanation for the whispers. "I think there is some jealousy from players who do not want to work as hard as Annika works." "She's the whole package," says LPGA Hall-of-Famer and ABC commentator Judy Rankin. "No player is as single-minded as she is. She is one of the great repeaters [of the swing] in the history of the game. She's physically stronger and mentally tougher. She wears people out." This will be Sorenstam's 10th LPGA season, meaning she will be eligible for the World Golf Hall of Fame at the end of the year. And though some speculate that Sorenstam may cut back her schedule, she says there are a few holes in her r?um?that she wants to fill. "You know, I've won 42 times," she says. "That's a lot. But when people look at my career, they say, 'She's only won four majors.' I would like to win more major championships. I feel if I can win 11 tournaments on the LPGA, I should be able to win four majors on our schedule." Does that mean she has the Grand Slam in her sights? Could winning the Kraft Nabisco, the McDonald's LPGA, the U.S. Women's Open and the Weetabix British Women's Open be a goal for 2003? "Definitely," she says. "[Last] year I won early, I won in the middle of the year, and I won at the end. If I can win any time of year, why can't I do it when the majors are there?" It's a grand goal, a vision of perfection. And perfection, for Sorenstam, is the goal worth pursuing.