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Lorena Ochoa is the No. 1 ranked player in the world.

It's a quality all the more impressive because Ochoa comes from the other Mexico, the one that historically has turned its back on the poor. She grew up in the gracious and leafy neighborhood surrounding the Guadalajara Country Club, a handsome fortress of wealth with an old-world veranda that overlooks a classic course designed by John Bredemus, the designer of Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth. A flip through the club's thick annual magazine shows as many tennis players, equestrians and swimmers as golfers, the vast majority possessing the lighter skin of Mexicans of European ancestry who dominate the country's highest economic echelon.

Ochoa's parents, Javier, a real estate developer, and Marcela, an abstract painter and sculptor, have the same light skin, which they passed on to their two sons and two daughters. Their home, where Lorena continues to live in an arrangement common in Spanish-speaking countries, is less than 100 yards from the first tee. Still single and with no other residence, she returns to Guadalajara between tournaments to decompress, practice, work out, spend time with lifelong friends and direct her foundation and golf academy. "It's where I feel me," she says.

Ochoa is on just such a break when she meets a team from Golf for Women at the club members call "El Country." "Hellooo," she says, using the shy but open greeting that has become a charming ritual at the beginning of her press conferences. Although only 5-foot-6 and weighing less than 130 pounds, Ochoa in person emanates an imposing strength. Some of it is surely the result of a regular regimen of weight training and yoga, but her smoothly muscled limbs and streamlined proportions are those of a lifelong nature sprite. Ochoa prefers minimal accoutrement both on and off the course, and although cooperative and friendly during the photo shoot, she seems inwardly amused at all the industry involved in getting ready for it.

"Lorena doesn't care about clothes," says Shanti Granada, a close friend since childhood. "She doesn't care about anything fancy, really. When I travel with her, I'm always amazed when we walk past first class and back to coach."

Explains Ochoa: "I'm just 25, and I'm a girl. There is no need. I enjoy my time in the airport. I like to be normal, too."