Sorenstam Wins No. 60 by 10

Annika Sorenstam made it to the first tee on time, which was all she really needed to do.

The final round of the Chick-fil-A Charity Championship was nothing more than a victory lap.

Bouncing back from her first loss of the year with one of her most dominating performances, Sorenstam blew away the field by 10 strokes Sunday for career win No. 60.

She came into the day with a 10-shot lead. She finished that way with a bogey-free 67 at Eagle’s Landing Country Club south of Atlanta.

“Obviously, I was very happy with the situation after three rounds. I’m teeing off with a 10-shot lead,” Sorenstam said. “But you don’t want to get too overly excited because you still have to play.”

No problem. No one got closer than nine shots the entire day.

“We were playing a different tournament,” said runner-up Candie Kung, who closed with a 65 that was good enough to win the B-Flight. “She’s up there in her own little world.”

Sorenstam finished with a 23-under 265, matching the biggest 72-hole win of her career.

When the final putt dropped, a three-footer for birdie at No. 18, she pumped her fist, waved to the crowd and hugged her caddie. “To finish the way I started and get win No. 60, it was a great Sunday,” Sorenstam said. “I felt like I did it with style.”

She fell just short of her most dominating performance, an 11-stroke victory at the 54-hole Kellogg-Keebler Classic in 2002.

More important, the 34-year-old Swede tied Patty Berg for third place on the LPGA Tour’s all-time victory list and can now take aim at the only two players to win more, Kathy Whitworth (88) and Mickey Wright (82).

Sorenstam also has 12 international wins that aren’t part of her official LPGA stats.

Sorenstam hit the fairway with 82% of her drives, reached the green in regulation 76% of the time and needed only 108 putts, an average of 27 per day.

“She’s got everything,” Kung said.

The resounding victory came a week after Sorenstam failed in her bid to break Nancy Lopez’s record of five straight wins. Cristie Kerr won at Kingsmill, and Sorenstam finished 10 strokes back in a tie for 12th and a share of Lopez’s record.

“I think I made her mad last week when I beat her by 10 shots,” said Kerr, who took third by finishing 11 shots behind Sorenstam. “She wanted to blow the field away, and she did.”

At the rate this is going, it would take only a few more years to knock off Wright and Whitworth. Sorenstam has won six of her last seven tournaments, eight of the last 11 and 37 overall since the start of 2001, the year she reclaimed her place as the world’s top-ranked player from Karrie Webb.