Annika Sorenstam

No, the magnet that pulled her to the game was so simple, so harmless, so innocent. It was the very essence of the game: The golf course was a place to have fun.

And there was hardly a better place to fashion a love affair with the game as Bro-Bålsta Golf Club, her home course. "I'm very proud of it," she says of the course located some 25 miles north-northwest of Stockholm, well hidden amid the forested terrain on the outskirts of the unruffled, one-stop light town of Bro. "I was there when the course started with six holes, and I can remember going out there to help them clean up in the spring. We'd pick up rocks and branches and help get the course ready for the summer. It's all a very important part of me."

Before she began to get serious about the game, Sorenstam, her younger sister, Charlotta, and their friends used Bro-Bålsta as a summer hang-out of sorts. "We were always at the golf course," she recalls. "I remember picking up balls in the lakes. We would dive into the lakes, once a week, to pick up golf balls. And I can remember sitting on the tee and dividing up the balls afterward. We would take out hundreds."

Water comes into play on nearly half the holes at Bro-BÅlsta, but two of the largest lodes came at the first hole, where right-out-of-the-box swings produced a lot of topped shots that trickled into the hazard just off the tee, and the 18th, from the pond short and right of the green. "Back then my favorite ball was the Pinnacle, and if it was yellow it reminded me of pineapple," she giggles. "We took a lot of balls out of 18 -- tons of balls."

As the winding waterways and romantic lure of Stockholm give way to the stillness of the countryside, the terrain rolls in gentle, more subtle waves. Pockets of deep, dark, majestic forests border the farmlands and they, in turn, yield to the sudden and steep shores of pristine lakes. The countryside in this part of the world is perfect jigsaw puzzle material.

It is among this natural land of wonder that Bro-Bålsta is located. As its 18 holes wind through tall pines and hardwoods, not a single reminder of the outside world is visible. None of the nearby factories. Traffic from the E18 has long been silenced by the dense virgin timberland. The hubbub of big-city life in Stockholm is only 25 miles away, but for all the quiet and solitude at Bro-BÅlsta, it may as well be a million. During the long, clear and quiet days of the Swedish summer, only the wisp of clouds drifting lazily by are visible beyond the treeline.

"I think it is a beautiful place to play golf," says Peter Nordwall, who owns the course he designed in 1980. "Here, I wanted to design the golf course the way the land is formed. See the way the rise in the back of the 18th green is done? It is that way because the land naturally rises from there to the clubhouse. It looks natural."

The scenery not only makes Bro-Bålsta an enjoyable experience, but the course is unique in its challenge. It provides players the opportunity to play a variety of shots. At some point over Bro-Bålsta's par of 73 a player will be asked to play almost any kind of shot imaginable: fade it, draw it, play the ball above and below the feet, off downhill and uphill lies. "On that course you need a lot of imagination," Annika says, "working the shot and asking yourself, 'Where do I need to play it?' It's a lot of fun because it really makes you think."

It's the perfect course to try every club in the bag, and for those who want to test their versatility without tackling all 18 holes, there's a nine-hole short course and one of the country's most expansive practice ranges on the property as well.

"When she was growing up, you would always see Annika practicing on the short course," Nordwall recalls. "You would find her around one of the greens. She would practice her chipping all day. Chip hundreds of balls. She practiced and practiced."

"Number one, we don't have any yardage markers on the course, so you really have to learn to measure with your eyes," says Charlotta. "It's okay to know the yardage, but sometimes your eyes tell you differently. It's also a course you have to play . . . strategically. You have to put the ball in the right part of the fairway and on the right part of the green."

"I think a few greens are 50 yards long," Annika adds, "so it's very important to know where the holes are. When I grew up I learned how to play a lot of chip-and-runs, low chips with a 5-iron, or even a 4-iron. It's also a long golf course, and so I grew up hitting a lot of long irons into the holes. . . . I think the most important part of learning to play there was hitting a lot of long irons and placement, and I think that's my strength -- strategy and course management."

Two holes a first-timer cannot possibly forget at Bro-Bålsta are the fourth and the eighth, and for a teenager struggling to keep the frustration level at a manageable level, parring those two holes, both par 4s, serves as a notable and unforgettable measure of supreme accomplishment.

From an elevated tee, the fairway at the fourth settles and levels out in a low-lying hollow, then rises sharply to the top of a prominence, where the green sits in a bowl. The change in elevation is so dramatic, it takes a flagstick twice the normal height -- 15 feet -- to give players any indication as to where they should be aiming.

"That's not very characteristic of the rest of the course," Annika says of the hole's unusual nature, "because you can't really see anything. I think the most important part of that hole is the tee shot -- placing it in the right position -- and hitting it toward the top of the flagstick since that is all you can see. I do know you need two hands to take the flagstick out and two hands to put it back in."

The notoriety of the eighth stems from the green, which, depending on your point of view, is either the goofiest or most difficult putting surface in all of golf. Imagine a ski jump with moguls. Nordwall built a putting green here, but the terrain could hold a water slide and not require supporting risers. It is a green where a player can practice putting and never move; you can putt the ball up to the hole and, if it doesn't go in, will come back to you. If you can go from the back of this green to the front and keep the ball on the putting surface, you can also putt a ball from the top of turn 4 at Talladega and stop it before it reaches the infield. Some of the club's members, in a vague attempt to coin an American expression, claim the green has "Donald Duck" undulations.

"Yeah, it is," Charlotta says of the prospect that the green at Bro-Bålsta's eighth is perhaps the hardest she's ever played. "I like the hole, but I don't totally agree with the design there. The hole is good because it's tough and long, but it's hard to find a good place to put the hole. . . . It's a little too much, I think."

The contours of the green were softened a few years ago, but there are still several impossibly maddening putts -- ones that break 20 feet or roll 30 feet by the hole and off the green. One official from the Swedish Golf Federation says the PGA European Tour would like to consider Bro-BÅlsta as a venue for an event, perhaps the Scandinavian Open, except that the eighth green is considered too much an abnormality.

It was at Bro-Bålsta that Sorenstam groomed her game under the tutelage of Henri Reis, Sweden's answer to David Leadbetter. Although Reis has moved his tack from Bro-Bålsta and Sorenstam's home is now several thousand miles from Stockholm, she still calls her old coach at those times -- as infrequent as they may be -- when her game starts to flounder or she senses the need for a bit of reassurance. "She always liked to practice," said Reis of Sorenstam after a practice session with a dozen Annika wannabes. "These girls here, yes, they all want to learn to play like Annika. Maybe one of them will."

Today, a board listing the current handicaps of the club's members hangs just inside the main entrance to the Bro-Bålsta clubhouse for all to see. And as it has been for several years, the Sorenstam sisters still reign as the queens of the club. Their +3 handicaps overshadow all the others, including the only other plus handicap listed, a +1 by Johan Skšld, who has gone on to try to secure his fortune on the PGA European Tour.

"I guess Lotta and I are the best players from my home course," Annika surmises. "There were probably a lot of guys who were better than we were in the beginning, but a lot of guys start school and get jobs, but Lotta and I started playing more and more and taking golf more seriously than the others."

Bro-Bålsta is a close-knit community, and there is no dispute the club and its members hold the Sorenstams in high regard. (For the record, Annika and Charlotta's parents both maintain handicaps a stroke or so on either side of 10; don't you think the two-time and defending United States Women's Open champion would give mom and dad at least a shot a hole?)

Shortly after Annika turned professional and left Stockholm to test her abilities against the rest of the world, she won a tournament in Austria with a score of 22 under par. Nordwall decided then the club would convey its congratulations by sending her roses -- one rose for every stroke under par -- and the slight Swede was nearly staggered by the volume of the first shipment. Seventeen roses arrived following her next victory, but when she won her first U.S. Women's Open at The Broadmoor in Colorado Springs with a score that was just two under par, the club sent along a note that jokingly said she wasn't fully depleting the club's so-called "rose account."

"It does not matter," Nordwall beams. "She has made us proud."

As she is of Bro-Bålsta.

-- Rich Skyzinski