HALMSTAD, Sweden (AP) — The golf world has seen a different version of Annika Sorenstam this year — a player who can't get into contention in majors, can't win even at lesser events, sometimes can't even find a swing that makes her comfortable.
Or, more simply, a player who is injured.
But Sorenstam is optimistic this week at the Solheim Cup.
Heading into the match-play contest between Europe and the United States, she says her bad back and neck, which forced her to miss two months earlier this year and have her on an unprecedented dry spell, are as good as they've felt in the last 18 months.
"I wish I could say I'm back to 100 percent," she said Wednesday, two days before the event begins with alternate-shot matches at Halmstad Golf Club on the southwest coast of Sweden. "I'm not there yet, but it's certainly going in the right direction."
These days, she's able to swing the club without it feeling completely foreign, able to work on making specific shots instead of merely concentrating on getting the club into position at the top. And that she's not in pain.
This all stems from a bulging disk in her back and a ruptured disk in her neck that flared up last year, around the time of the U.S. Open, and got so bad earlier this year that she had to take time off.
Sorenstam is winless this year, in danger of completing her first full season on tour since 1994, when she was a rookie, without a victory. Maybe not that stunning even for a top-caliber player, unless you consider that Sorenstam has 84 career victories and won more than 41 percent of her starts between 2001 and 2005. She has also lost the top spot in the rankings to Lorena Ochoa.
"There's no reason to be upset and angry," Sorenstam insists.
Indeed, this has not been a completely lost year.
She has opened her new golf academy, a 5,400-square-foot facility near Orlando that she says is designed to share her passion for golf and fitness with players around the world.
And she got engaged to Mike McGee, a former agent who now works as Sorenstam's business manager.
All that has put her struggles on the golf course in perspective.
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