Peter Williams: Grand Slam goal still the target, for men and women

This weekend and next we'll see if the best male and female golfers of their generation will continue their quests for golf's impossible dream - the Grand Slam. Nobody, male or female, has won all four majors in one year, although Tiger did the next best thing with four in succession from the US Open of 2000 to the 2001 Masters.

The prospect of someone completing the modern version of the 'Impregnable Quadrilateral', as Bobby Jones' unique set of open and amateur titles on both sides of the Atlantic in 1930 was called, is still remote. Woods is the only player who can do it this year when, as Masters champion, he tees it up for the 105th US Open at the venerable Pinehurst No 2 course in North Carolina later this week. But there are too many good players in men's golf these days for anybody to win all four majors in one year and Woods isn't the player he was five years ago.

But Annika Sorenstam is a different story. She's a red-hot favourite to win the LPGA Championship in Maryland, the third round of which is played today.

Just what constitutes a major championship for women has tended to be a moveable feast. The original events in the 1930s and 40s were called the Titleholders Championship and the Western Open and they were joined by the LPGA and the US Women's Open after World War II.

When the Titleholders and the Western folded in the sixties, they were eventually replaced by a couple of sponsored events, the Kraft Nabisco Championship, which still exists, and the du Maurier Classic, which doesn't. The ban on tobacco advertising brought about its demise and the long-established women's British Open was elevated to the status of fourth major by the LPGA Tour in 2001.

As with men, no woman has won four majors in a year, although two women have won all the major championships played in a particular year. The brilliantly versatile Mildred 'Babe' Zaharias, Olympic athletics gold medallist in 1932, won the US Women's Open, the Titleholders and the Western in 1950, five years before the LPGA was first played, while Sandra Haynie triumphed in the Open and the LPGA in 1974, a year when no other events were deemed 'major'. Mickey Wright, women's golf's most prolific winner, won the LPGA, the Women's Open and the Titleholders in 1961 and was third in the Western. That's the benchmark.

In March, Sorenstam won this year's first major, the Kraft Nabisco Championship. She virtually lapped the field with an eight-shot win over Rosie Jones.

That was one of five wins she's had this year - in just seven events. In the others, she tied for second in one and was 12th equal in the other. In other words she is as dominant in her sport as it's possible to be.

By her own admission, the Grand Slam is what drives her because, she hasn't been as dominant in the major championships as in other tour events. Last year was a case in point. She won eight times but only one major.

She will surely, in time, become the winner of the most tournaments in LPGA history and the winner of the most majors.

But nobody else can be first to win four majors in one year. The next couple of days will tell us whether we're still on course for one of the great feats of modern-day sport.

- HERALD ON SUNDAY