For all the amazing numbers connected with Annika Sorenstam, from her 54 victories on the LPGA Tour in one decade to becoming the only woman to shoot 59, it was one simple swing with a 4-wood that turned the once-shy Swede into a one-name athlete.

The club carried the weight of an entire gender that Thursday at Colonial in 2003 when Sorenstam drew it back and sent her tee shot down the 10th fairway, becoming the first woman in 58 years to tee it up on the PGA Tour.

Not many remember that she missed the cut, one of only three times in the 2000s she didn't play on the weekend.

It's the qualities implicit in statistics like that _ Sorenstam's dominance, her consistency, her ability to play on the same stage as male golfers _ that make her a candidate for The Associated Press' Athlete of the Decade.

She pursued perfection through a concept called "Vision 54," the idea that one could birdie every hole. And while she never got there, Sorenstam never quit trying. In her best season of the decade, she won 11 times on the LPGA Tour in 2002, set a record for earnings and became the first woman with a sub-69 scoring average.

With nothing left to prove, she decided to take on the men.

"If you look back at her motivation, she did it to test herself, to raise her own level," said Ty Votaw, the LPGA commissioner during Sorenstam's rise to stardom. "Along with that came pressure, hype, distractions from all the other places, and it added to the overall significance. From that moment on, she became a one-name athlete _ like Tiger, like Ali."

Even Tiger Woods looks back on Sorenstam's decade with wonder.

They became friends through having the same agent, played an occasional practice round together in Florida, and were teammates in a made-for-TV exhibition. They even exchanged text messages each time they won a major, a friendly competition to see who could win more.

"She was as consistent as any player that ever played the game," Woods said in an interview several weeks ago, before he suddenly captured tabloid headlines. "She was more efficient (than anyone) at winning and managing her game, male or female."

Told that he had actually won more times in the decade, Woods smiled and said, "She retired."

Sorenstam walked away from the game last year at age 38, still close to the top, saying she wanted to pursue a family and a business venture, and she couldn't allow herself to play without giving it her all.

That's what made her Annika.

She was among the first to bring fitness to the LPGA, working out at a frenetic pace. In a sport that features so many moving parts, her swing repeated itself so beautifully that it looked robotic, and it produced machine-like results.