Halmstad, Sweden – Even though everyone knows she has been injured, it’s still strange to watch a player as good as Annika Sorenstam struggle the way she has in 2007.
It’s also strange to hear her talk about the state of her golf game like this: “I’ve been able to play, but it just hasn’t been the way I know I can.”
She has reason to believe things could change this week at the Solheim Cup. Heading into the match-play contest between the best in Europe and the United States, Sorenstam says her bad back and neck, which forced her to miss two months this year, are as good as they have felt in the past 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. “I’m not there yet, but it’s certainly going in the right direction.”
The “right direction” means that she is able to swing a club without it feeling completely foreign, that she is able to work on hitting specific shots instead of merely concentrating on getting the club into position at the top. And that she is not in pain.
This all stems from a bulging disc in her back and a ruptured disc in her neck that flared up last year, around the time of the U.S. Open, and got so bad this year that she had to take time off.
Sorenstam is winless this year, in danger of completing her first full season on the tour since 1994, when she was a rookie, without a victory. Maybe not that stunning even for a top-caliber player, unless you consider Sorenstam has 84 career victories and won more than 41 percent of her starts between 2001 and 2005.
