Scott Halleran / Getty Images

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

When not playing or practicing golf, Ochoa is most in her element water-skiing at a high enough level that she can complete flips, or running half marathons, or rock climbing, or any number of outdoor challenges most elite professional athletes would consider too risky. Her original golf instructor, 73-year-old Jesus Sandoval, remembers a little curly-haired girl who wore her baseball cap sideways and ran around the practice green barefoot. Chuckling, he points to a grove of trees Ochoa fell from at age 5, breaking both wrists, requiring her to wear two full-length casts for three months. Family lore has it that she emerged from the plaster with "magic wrists."

Sandoval emphasized the proper golf stance and kept the youngster's enthusiasm up by challenging her to hit shots over and around trees. "We always had so much fun," Ochoa remembers. By age 8, she could frequently be found sitting cross-legged a few feet behind Mexico's best male player at the time, Rafael Alarcón, as he practiced. "It was such a thrill to watch Rafael, to see what was possible to do with a golf ball," Ochoa says. Soon after, she was traveling to San Diego to play in the Junior World Golf Championships, and she would go on to win five consecutive age-group titles. Later would come her two-year career at the University of Arizona, where she won 12 tournaments, including eight in a row as a sophomore. Last June she notched her 12th career LPGA Tour victory at the Wegmans LPGA in Pittsford, N.Y.

Despite being a girl in a male-dominated culture, in a country with only 18,000 golfers that has produced only one other LPGA player (Mina Rodriguez-Hardin in the 1980s), Ochoa was always encouraged to pursue her love for the game and the dream of making it her life.

"We get a lot of satisfaction supporting our children in what they love," says Javier Ochoa in Spanish, recounting how in 2004 he waited at a 17,000-foot base camp on Mount Everest while his son Alejandro reached the summit. (Ochoa won her first LPGA tournament the same weekend.) "Since she was small, Lorena has been an athlete who loves to challenge herself. Whether it was golf or climbing, biking or riding horses, I could see it made her happy, so we always said, 'Let's go.'" Adds her mother, Marcela, "I have always thought that whatever Lorena wanted to do, she would do it well. She treats her golf like art—there is no detail too small."

Those qualities and her success this year inspired her cousin Jonathan Ochoa and a friend to begin filming a documentary—with a working title of Mi Processo (My Process)—that follows Lorena through her daily life. "Ever since she was young, she gave off this energy that just made you know that she was going to be someone and do something," says Jonathan, 24. "She was always so positive, and so thankful for the things she is able to do."