The unpredictable and the dramatic were served up in abundance during 2002 but, unsurprisingly, Tiger Woods and Annika Sorenstam maintained their respective dominance in men's and women's golf.

Woods won the first two major championships of the year on his way to piling up more money than anyone else in both Europe and the United States while Sweden's Sorenstam racked up 13 titles worldwide to complete one of the most successful seasons in golfing history.

The 26-year-old Woods and the 32-year-old Sorenstam continue to set the benchmark with their single-minded focus and unquenchable thirst for victory and both can be expected to maintain their number one world rankings in 2003.

If the ongoing dominance of American Woods reflected business as usual during 2002, there was largely disappointment for those hoping that the likes of Ernie Els, Phil Mickelson, Sergio Garcia, David Duval and Vijay Singh would be able to close the gap on the best player in the men's game.

Smooth-swinging South African Els managed to bounce back from an indifferent 2001 to clinch his third career major title in the British Open at Muirfield but the world number three still has some way to go if he is to match the consistency of Woods in the heat of battle.

Mickelson, world-ranked two, secured top-three finishes in the first two grand slam tournaments of the year but the richly talented left-hander has yet to win a major in 42 starts.

Garcia, arguably the only leading player unafraid of taking on Woods when the world number one is on his game, set his sights on topping the money lists on both sides of the Atlantic at the start of the year.

Impressively, the swashbuckling Spaniard won the PGA Tour's season-opening Mercedes Championships in Hawaii and then the European Tour's Spanish Open in late April but those proved to be his only titles by the end of the season.

DIFFERENT LEAGUE

Woods was simply in a different league to the rest. Five PGA Tour titles during the year helped him to collect overall earnings of $6,912,625 and his career total is now beyond $33 million.

Apart from fellow American Tom Watson, Woods is the only player to win the PGA Tour money list four years in a row. Watson achieved the feat from 1977 to 1980.

For a significant part of 2002, it seemed that Woods was destined to become the first professional to secure the grand slam of all four majors in a single season.

He successfully defended his U.S. Masters title in April, becoming the third back-to-back winner at Augusta National after Jack Nicklaus in 1966 and Nick Faldo in 1990.

In June, he held off the last-day challenge of Mickelson to clinch victory by three shots in the 102nd U.S. Open, becoming the first player since Nicklaus -- in 1972 -- to win the first two majors of the year.

One month later at Muirfield, Woods still had the grand slam firmly in his sights after firing a steady second-round 68 to lie just two shots off the British Open lead going into the weekend.

But his year was overturned in dramatic fashion the following day as he slumped to a 10-over-par 81, the worst score of his professional career, in howling wind and driving rain.

It was greatly to his credit that he bounced back with a closing 65 in benign conditions on the Sunday, several hours before Els survived a roller-coaster ride of emotion -- and some poor shot execution -- to win his first British Open crown in a four-way playoff.

Woods came desperately close to winning the final major of the year, the U.S. PGA Championship at Hazeltine in August, but left himself with too much to do over the closing stretch.

SHAKY START

Despite a stunning four-birdie finish, he paid the penalty for a shaky start and ended up one shot behind surprise winner Rich Beem, who only four years earlier had been selling cellular phones and car stereo systems in Seattle.

"But two majors is still a great year," Woods said of his season. "I think sometimes the media and everybody tend to lose perspective on how difficult it is to win a major championship.

"Any time you win one major in a year, it is going to be a successful year."

Almost as surprising as Beem's shock victory at Hazeltine was the last-day surge to victory by the European Ryder Cup team over the United States at The Belfry in late September.

Inspired by captain Sam Torrance's ploy of top-loading his singles order and fired by a near-faultless Colin Montgomerie in the first match out, Europe beat the U.S. by 15-1/2 points to 12-1/2. It was only the third time the Europeans had had the better of the singles matches in the last 12 Ryder Cups.

A common theme on both sides of the Atlantic during 2002 was the growing strength in depth on the two major tours in the game. On the PGA Tour, there were 18 first-time winners -- with Jerry Kelly and Len Mattiace both going on to win twice -- while in Europe, where South Africa's Retief Goosen retained his money-list title, 14 players won maiden titles.

In the women's game, there were four different major winners -- Sorenstam clinching the Nabisco title, South Korea's Pak Se-ri winning the McDonald's LPGA championship, American Juli Inkster triumphing at the U.S. Open and Australian Karrie Webb securing the British Open.

But Sorenstam, like Woods, was the dominant figure. Victory at the season-ending Tour Championship was her 11th of the year on the LPGA Tour, the most since Mickey Wright in 1964. She also won the Australian Masters and the European Tour's Compaq Open, set a new scoring average of 68.7 and collected a record $2,863,904 in earnings.

Golf is rarely predictable but the dominance produced by Woods and Sorenstam during 2002 was widely expected.