It missed by that much.

The shot that won yesterday’s JAL Big Apple Classic came whizzing eye-level past a reporter as he stood under a huge oak tree on Wykagyl’s 17th fairway, watching and wondering how Annika Sorenstam was going to get out of the rough onto the green.

It seemed like an impossible shot; a shot only a handful of golfers in the world would have a chance to make.

With the tournament on the line, Sorenstam pulled out a 7-iron and sent a screaming line drive 132 yards towards the green. The ball hit in front of the green, ran up to the right, and stopped 15 feet from the hole, pin high.

“Don’t ask me to do that again,” said Sorenstam, wearing the winner’s blazing red jacket. “There was a big tree. I had to hit it down the fairway, which was wet, so I had to hit it with enough power to get to the green, but low enough so it went under the tree limb. I can hit that shot. But to have it stop pin high, you need a little luck.”

Sorenstam, who finished with a 54-hole score of 206, had the luck and skill to pull off the shot of the tournament, which she also won in 1998. Betsy King is the only other golfer to have won the Big Apple twice (1990 and 1991).

Sorenstam arrived at the 17th tee tied with Rosie Jones at 6-under par and one stroke ahead of Allison Finney, the leader after two rounds.

Jones was straight and true off the tee, but Sorenstam found the wet rough left of the fairway. She said she never considered any other option. A win was in her grasp and if it took a breathtaking punch-and-run, then Sorenstam could see it happening.

“I saw the shot,” she said. “I pictured it from the beginning. It was just a matter of doing it.”

The ball came off her club like a cruise missile and drew back to the left.

“It was a great shot,” said Jones. “She really only had one choice, to go underneath [the tree] and she hit it just absolutely perfect.”

Sorenstam, who goes into next week’s Women’s U.S. Open outside of Chicago having won the last two stops on the LPGA Tour, then had the advantage of watching Jones try to sink a 20-footer that was pin high left. She pushed it a tad right and Sorenstam had a better idea of what her putt would do. She drained it and pumped her fist.

“I just had a feeling she was going to make that putt,” said Jones.

Sorenstam didn’t have much of a feel when she went off the first tee at 10:45 with Finney and Jones. Finney went to 9-under with a birdie on the fifth hole. Sorenstam, meanwhile, was floundering, making bogeys on the third and seventh hole to fall three back of Jones and Finney, who also bogeyed No.7.

“The front nine, the first two hours, I just felt like going home,” said Sorenstam.

Instead she stuck around and the leaders came back to her. Jones bogeyed the 10th and 11th to go to 6-under. Finney bogeyed 8, 9, 10 and 12 to fall to 4-under. Finney hasn’t won in 11 years and having an extra day to think about winning [Saturday’s third round was rained out] proved too much to overcome.

“It was on my mind all the time,” Finney said of being in the lead. “I couldn’t get away from it.”

None of the threesome was able to separate from the pack, and both Jones and Sorenstam said they knew it was going to come down to one great shot. That shot came on the 17th.

“She’s tough,” said Jones. “As the day went on, she just got better and better.”