Annika Sorenstam started the year just like any other, focusing on the major championships.

That turned out to be only one part of a grandiose year.

“If someone had told me I would win two, I would have been very happy,” Sorenstam said. “Little did I know about everything else.”

Two majors, the LPGA Championship and the Women’s British Open, gave her the career Grand Slam. Two rounds at the Colonial, where Sorenstam became the first woman in 58 years to play on the PGA Tour, made her one of the most famous athletes in the world.

Along the way, she led Europe to victory at the Solheim Cup played for the first time in her native Sweden, and was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame.

Sorenstam capped her year Monday when she was voted Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year by more than double the margin over Connecticut basketball player Diana Taurasi.

“She probably was deserving in other years, like in 2002 when she won 13 times,” LPGA commissioner Ty Votaw said. “The amazing thing about Annika is she found ways to improve herself, maybe not in number of wins or amount of money, but in things that mattered to her — stretching herself to the PGA Tour level of competition.”

Sorenstam received 47 first-place votes and 249 points in voting by AP member newspapers and broadcast outlets. Taurasi, the player of the year who led UConn to the national title, got six first-place votes and 102 points.

Justin Henin-Hardenne, who won the French Open and U.S. Open and finished the year at No. 1, finished third with 44 points. She was followed by soccer player Mia Hamm and jockey Julie Krone.

Sorenstam finished the year with six victories and more than $2 million. She said she never would play another PGA event, although she competed twice more against the men in Skins games. Sorenstam shot 63 and finished second behind Retief Goosen at the Tiger Skins in Singapore, then won $225,000 and finished second behind Fred Couples — and ahead of Phil Mickelson and Mark O’Meara — in the Skins Game.