Chris Carlson / AP

Annika Sorenstam, right, jumps into the lake with her sister, Charlotta, after Annika won the Kraft Nabisco Championship golf tournament Sunday. Annika obliterated the field, didn’t make a bogey in her last 39 holes and won by eight shots, but hardly anyone noticed, writes columnist Tim Dahlberg.

COMMENTARY

By Tim Dahlberg

Tiger Woods hasn’t won 59 tournaments, or shot a 59 when it counted. Come to think of it, he’s never jumped in a pond after winning, either.

Annika Sorenstam has, so maybe it wasn’t such a stretch when LPGA great Nancy Lopez said over the weekend that Sorenstam is “really, and truly” better than Woods.

No, Lopez didn’t mean Sorenstam can beat Woods on the golf course.

She knows that if you put the two on the course from the same tees, Woods wins easily every time. Let Annika play the women’s tees, and Woods still wins most of the time.

What Lopez was arguing was that Sorenstam is better than Woods because she is more dominant among those of her own gender than Woods has been against men on the PGA Tour.

“Tiger, he was awesome,” Lopez said. “He’s won and played great golf, but I just don’t think he dominated the way she has.”

It’s a reasonable enough argument, for those who believe women’s golf is the equal of the men’s tour. Sorenstam has done things never seen before on the LPGA Tour, where she’s now won her last five tournaments and the first major championship of the year in a rout.

The problem, though, is that it’s hard to find anyone not associated with the women’s tour who really cares. Sorenstam’s win in the Nabisco Championship on Sunday was the stuff legends are made of, but legends simply aren’t made in women’s golf anymore, at least since the days of Babe Didrikson Zaharias.

Sorenstam basically did the same thing over the weekend in the California desert, though hardly anyone noticed. She obliterated the field, didn’t make a bogey in her last 39 holes, and won by eight shots over Rosie Jones.

It was an amazing run by an amazing player. In the end, though, it was just women’s golf.

It’s not Sorenstam’s fault — and it hurts her more than most — but women’s golf doesn’t sell just like women’s sports in general don’t sell. That’s largely because women aren’t big sports fans, and most men don’t want to watch women’s sports.

That’s why crowds were sparse at the Nabisco, the women’s NCAA regionals played to thousands of empty seats and the WNBA teeters on the brink of extinction every year.

Quick. Name five prominent female athletes who aren’t tennis players. Better yet, name four other women golfers whose last names aren’t Sorenstam.

Done yet?

No wonder that, at the same time Sorenstam was rewriting record books, most golf fans were wondering when the storm delay would be over at the Player’s Championship so they could watch Woods, Phil Mickelson, Ernie Els and others try to hit the island green on No. 17.