KAHUKU — When the Golf Channel has showed us Annika Sorenstam in recent years about this time, it was usually on a pair of skis gliding carefree down a slope somewhere.

Or, on a snowboarding vacation.

Never, in the three previous years of the SBS Open at Turtle Bay, had we glimpsed the LPGA's most successful active player with a club in hand, much less actually teeing it up in the vicinity of the North Shore.

So, on her way to a place atop the leaderboard yesterday, where she is tied with Erica Blasberg at 7-under-par 137 and bidding for a milestone 70th tournament victory entering today's final round, it was small wonder Sorenstam got "welcome back" to Hawai'i acknowledgements from the gallery.

The return of Sorenstam, a Hall of Famer and eight-time LPGA player of the year, has given the tournament a considerable boost. But, unlike her long-missing PGA Tour contemporaries, there was no doubt Sorenstam would be back in paradise. One way or another.

Unlike Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, whose absence has hit the seven-year mark in Hawai'i's two opening PGA Tour events — the Mercedes Championships and Sony Open in Hawai'i — Sorenstam was bound to be here this year.

She maintains that it was a matter of choice — and scheduling. That because of a reduced schedule (a 14-year low of only 13 LPGA events in 2007) due to a back injury, she didn't require as long of an offseason and was looking forward to playing in Hawai'i again instead of easing into the schedule in March.

But even if the injury hadn't played into the equation, Sorenstam would have had powerful incentive to get back here, pronto. The LPGA mandates that its players make each Tour stop at least once every four years under penalty of a fine. Or, as Sorenstam put it yesterday: "I got an e-mail from the LPGA and it (the SBS) turned out to be one of them."

You wish the PGA had something along the same lines. You wish it was sending out e-mails, something that would encourage, if not compel, its headliners to mix in the other stops, such as Mercedes and Sony, now and then, too.

Of course, the threat of a five-figure fine on the LPGA Tour, where winner's purses such as SBS total $165,000, carries a lot less of a threat than it would on the more lucrative PGA Tour. There, even if it was six figures, it might not measure up to what a Woods or Mickelson pay out in tips in a year.

For the time being, you can count on seeing the LPGA stars here at least on occasion, if not regularly.

Hopefully, when it comes to the PGA, some day fans here will get an opportunity to say, "welcome back, Tiger" too.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.