Ready or Not, Here Comes Sorenstam

Annika Sorenstam from Sweden, that idealistic nation that wears wool, pays taxes and raises children who refuse to draw attention to themselves? Annika Sorenstam, who as a teenager used to throw tournaments because she couldn’t bear the thought of having to give the little 18th-hole victory speech? Who arrived at the University of Arizona in 1990 on a bed of one-word answers and made barely a peep, save for the thwack of the thousands of extra practice balls she hit?

Really. Beginning Thursday in the heat of Texas, Sorenstam, 32, will serve as the lone woman in the Colonial.

Answering the tournament’s invitation born of her 13 wins in 2002 alone, she will become the first female player in a PGA Tour event since the astounding Babe Didrickson Zaharias made the cut in Los Angeles in 1945. Sorenstam, of all people, will rev up the loud capitalist engine, bloating both the media contingent and the TV ratings.

She’ll do so not out of feminism but out of curiosity — her own. She’s rather addicted to challenges. ‘‘I have always admired the guys,’’ she said. ‘‘I love the way they play, and I don’t think it’s a secret that the guys hit it farther or are stronger, and I want to learn from that. When I grew up, I played with the boys. They were always a step ahead. When I practiced with Tiger’’— earlier this spring near Orlando, Florida — ‘‘I enjoyed it. It was fun to see how he approaches the game.’’

Some have smelled a publicity stunt. Well, some presumed the Earth flat. In Sweden, it’s called Jantelagen, but for purposes of English, use ‘‘the Jante law.’’ It means, basically: Never under any circumstances are you to make a big ol’ Times Square of yourself. It helps explain the litany of famous Swedish athletes, from Bjorn Borg to Stefan Edberg to Sorenstam, who in the United States of Having Even Your Plastic Surgery on Reality TV draw descriptions such as ‘‘bland’’ or ‘‘aloof’’ or ‘‘remote.’’

Thereby did Sorenstam, a shockingly tireless worker, wander into the great publicity forest and emerge surprised, even after essentially living here for 13 years and owning houses in Orlando and Lake Tahoe. By the time she had appeared on ‘‘60 Minutes’’ and ‘‘Today’’ and on everything but ‘‘The Osbournes’’, she turned up in Virginia in early May and said: ‘‘I am overwhelmed by all the attention. I must say that I didn’t expect this. Maybe I was a little naive when I announced I was going to play in a PGA event.’’

‘‘Obviously, I wouldn’t do this if I thought it would hurt the LPGA,’’ she said later. ‘‘I want to say that all the recognition I am getting is feeding off toward the LPGA.’’

Here’s the woman who has Woods defending her, saying she ought to play four or five PGA tournaments for a fairer reading of how she’d fare, only half a life removed from a debilitating shyness. As a teenager in Sweden she’d actually find herself on the latter greens of a round, finagling the ball so it would not go into the cup.

‘‘She’d four- and five-putt,’’ said her husband, David Esch, whom she met in 1994. This woman who’ll have a Rumsfeldian media following this week would strive to finish, say, second, so she wouldn’t have to stand before a gaggle of people and say a few words.

Finally, one day in 1987, at Trosa, Sweden, she remained so locked in on golf that she apparently forgot about the dreaded speech, won the tournament and, legend has it, began with ‘‘I’m better at golf than giving speeches.’’ Now her answers to the media come in long paragraphs as if by rote, and at a tournament in Portland, Ore., she even turned on her way out of the press room and gave a sudden, surprising, unnecessary, understated, ‘‘Thank you for covering the event.’’

She’s still a light year from a publicity stuntwoman, but it turns out she’s a once-you-get-to-know-her sort, and we’re just getting to know her. So Sorenstam will play Colonial and break the Jante law this week because, as former college teammate Laura Ingram put it, ‘‘There’s no in-between for her.’’

‘‘It is a golf shot,’’ she said. ‘‘You have to trust the club you are hitting. It is just, can I keep my mind focused on what I have got to do? I think that will be the hardest thing for me.’’ (LT-WP)