Robert Galbraith / Reuters

Annika Sorenstam, right, and her sister Charlotta jump into the lake at the 18th green after Annika won the Kraft Nabisco Championship in March.

For reference, cast your thoughts back to 2003 when Sorenstam came within a few shots of accomplishing such a feat. She finished second, just one shot behind Patricia Meunier-Lebouc at the Kraft Nabisco Championship, then she finally won the LPGA Championship, ending several years of frustration. A month later, Sorenstam for all intents and purposes had the U.S. Women’s Open title in her grasp, only to squander it with a rare mistake.

Holding a 4-wood and standing in the middle of the fairway at the 18^th hole of Pumpkin Ridge GC outside of Portland, Ore., Sorenstam was tied for the lead and seemingly a cinch to reach in two, make birdie and win.

Until she went wide right with the fairway wood, which is perhaps the strength of her game. Instead of birdie and outright victory, she made bogey and didn’t even get into a playoff that featured three players — Hilary Lunke, Angela Stanford, Kelly Robbins — who would need a lengthy elevator ride up to reach her penthouse stature.

When Sorenstam won the Women’s British Open a month later, it gave her the career Grand Slam, but it also provided the opportunity to ponder just how agonizingly close she had come to winning all the majors in that calendar year. She won just one of the four in 2004, but here’s one man’s opinion that she sweeps up in the next few months.

Why?

Kerr? Please.

She’s perhaps the best American player right now, but twice in the last four months she has been in control of big tournaments and twice she has melted at the sight of Sorenstam. Last November’s LPGA Tour’s season-ending ADT Championship saw Kerr went head-to-head in a playoff with the Swede, who needed only a bogey to win. Kerr hit into water and made double. Then, earlier this month at the MasterCard Classic in Mexico, Kerr had a three-shot lead over Sorenstam entering the final round, but ballooned to 75 and got waxed by the Swede’s closing 68.

Webb is no longer a factor, Pak is slumping, and great as Park is, she sorely lacks the course-management skills that are at the heart of Sorenstam’s game. Veterans such as Inkster, Mallon, and Rosie Jones can still step up challenge and look no further than the U.S. Women’s Open of last summer — Mallon at her precision-like best — as proof, but they lack the power of Sorenstam.

Sure, Creamer, Wie, and Julieta Granada are talented . . . all we have to do is wait another five years for them to mature and be prepared to challenge Sorenstam, who by then will be 39, in possession of 70 or so career victories, perhaps as many as 15-20 of them majors.

Then again, maybe the women can hope for the best scenario, which is this: Sorenstam sweeps the Grand Slam in 2005, realizes she has done everything there is to do in the game, and walks away to pursue a career as a world-renowned chef.

Don’t count on it.

Giving up golf for cooking, that is.

The Grand Slam you can count on it.