In men's professional golf, it can often seem that money - and, inevitably, Tiger Woods - makes the world go round. And, in many ways, that is true, for the world number one player is generally at the centre of the action.
Yet, he finished 2003 without a major win (the first time since 1998 that he didn't claim a major) and, with the year producing four first-time winners, Woods was in danger of being pushed into the shadows.
But not quite. For while Mike Weir (US Masters), Jim Furyk (US Open), Ben Curtis (British Open) and Shaun Micheel (US PGA) were scooping the big titles, Woods still managed to win five times on the US Tour (including two world championship titles) and earned over $6.5 million in prize money to add to his bulging bank account.
If anyone did manage to push Woods into the golfing shadows in the past year, it was a woman. Annika Sorenstam may have missed the cut in the Colonial Tournament in May, but her decision to pit her skills against the men in the white heat of competition captured everyone's imagination . . . and she was able to utilise that experience by going on to achieve even greater heights in the women's professional game.
Sorenstam was golf's dominant personality in 2003. In accumulating seven worldwide wins, the women's world number one captured two major titles - beating Grace Park in a play-off at the LPGA Championship and then claiming the Women's British Open at Royal Lytham where she beat Se Ri Pak by one stroke - and so became only the sixth player to win a career Grand Slam.
Not only that, but Sorenstam proved herself to be very much a team player when contributing four of a possible five points to Europe's cause in successfully claiming the Solheim Cup in front of home support in Sweden.
Not surprisingly, she topped the US LPGA Tour's money list for the third successive year and was voted Player of the Year by her peers for the sixth time. She was also inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame.
"If you measure a year in the amount of victories, last year I won more," she admitted. "But the experiences I had this year and obviously Colonial, that's the greatest thing that will ever happen to me. It was like a fairy tale and I didn't want it to end. I think it's the best year I've ever had. I have wonderful memories. I played some great golf. I think I've really taken my game to a different level, which is really my goal.
"I'd like to win a few more majors, for sure. I feel like I haven't reached my peak yet. So I'm going to go hard again next year and see if I can achieve some more of the goals I have, some more majors."
On the men's professional circuit, particularly in the majors, things were not unfolding as anticipated. It all started at Augusta National in April, where Martha Burk and her small army of like-minded souls who protested at the club's male-only membership were restricted to a car park a mile away where they were joined by Elvis Presley impersonators and such like.
On the course, Weir became the first Canadian and the first left-hander in 40 years to win a major.
In the 103rd US Open, played at Olympia Fields near Chicago, American Jim Furyk - a player much maligned and often mocked for his unorthodox swing - produced a focused performance that was vindication for one of the game's hardest workers when he took victory.
Down through the years, he had always been a major contender and actually had secured no fewer than 11 top-10 finishes in majors prior to scooping the jackpot.
If Weir and Furyk were first-time winners, at least their successes hadn't come entirely out of the blue. After all, both were ranked inside the world's top-10.
The same could not be said for the season's two other major winners. Ben Curtis only got into the field for the British Open through a curious qualifying route in a nondescript US Tour event and was ranked 396th in the world when teeing off in his first major.
Unheralded and unsung, Curtis held his nerve at Royal St George's while others lost theirs - Thomas Bjorn finished with a run of double bogey-bogey-bogey from the 15th to finish a shot behind the winner - and the American rookie secured one of the most unlikely wins in major championship history, one to rank alongside that of Jack Fleck, an obscure professional, beating the legendary Ben Hogan in a play-off to win the US Open in 1955 or John Daly's unlikely success in the 1991 US PGA.
Micheel's win in the US PGA at Oak Hill was an appropriate conclusion to golf's year of surprises, the first time since 1969 that first-timers took all four majors. Ranked 169th in the world, and playing in his first US PGA, Micheel produced one of the shots of the year on the 72nd hole - almost holing out his seven-iron approach to the elevated green - to claim a two stroke winning margin over Chad Campbell.
In a year of great expectations, neither Padraig Harrington nor Darren Clarke managed to deliver in any of the majors.
Yet, the two finished the season as Europe's top two players (even if South African Ernie Els beat both of them to the Volvo Order of Merit title): Harrington, who had started his season with a win in the Asian Open the previous November, finished runner-up to Davis Love in the Players Championship and then peaked in May when, a week after taking second place in the last Benson and Hedges, he won the Deutsche Bank TPC of Europe in Hamburg; and Clarke became only the second player (along with Woods) to claim multiple WGC titles when adding the NEC Invitational in August to the world matchplay title he won in 2000.
Peter Lawrie did not manage a tournament win, but he did managed to finish the season as the European Tour's "rookie of the year" and, so, became the first Irishman to win the Henry Cotton trophy.
On the amateur front, it was an exceptionally good year for Irish golfers: Brian McElhinney won the European amateur strokeplay title (which gives him a place in next year's British Open at Troon), Noel Fox and Colm Moriarty were part of captain Garth McGimpsey's winning Walker Cup team, and both the Ireland men's and women's team captured their respective Home International titles.
