Sorenstam: The Best Ever Calls It Quits ... For Now?

Sorenstam said when she watched Brett Favre's retirement press conference earlier this year, she could identify when the veteran Green Bay quarterback said he still loved the competition, but hated the grind of preparing to play the games. I still think Favre is going to play again, just as I'm certain that Sorenstam, only 37, likely will tee it up in tournaments every now and then beyond the 2008 season.

As one of her main rivals, defending Woman's U.S. Open champion Cristie Kerr, said on Tuesday, "it's not uncommon for athletes to retire and unretire."

But tournament golf unquestionably no longer will be the dominating priority in her life, and that's what always set her far above the chasing pack. No one ever outworked Sorenstam. No one ever put in more hours at the driving range, at the practice putting green or the gym. Repeat: no one.

The sacrifices she made to achieve that No. 1 ranking were enormous, possibly including the dissolution of her first marriage. Plainly put, Sorenstam had given the game everything she had, and now it's apparently time to let the game go one way, and follow a different path herself.

A year ago, in a one-on-one interview with Sorenstam at the Kraft Nabisco Championship in Palm Springs, I got the sense that she was already eager to change the direction in her life, and much sooner than later.

She spoke that day about all the new projects she was immersed in -- the golf academy she had just opened in Florida, the new line of clothing with her Annika brand attached, the possibility of designing golf courses and her oft-stated goal of starting a family now that she was getting serious with the new man in her life, player agent Mike McGee.

In retrospect, I honestly believe Sorenstam might have considered walking away after the 2007 season, at least until that painful neck injury forced her to stop playing shortly after we spoke in the California desert. She eventually came back toward the end of the season, but if you knew Sorenstam, you also knew that no way would she retire after a year that saw her play in only 13 tournaments and finish 25th on the money list.

Clearly, Sorenstam was not about to go out like that. She has always been about setting lofty goals for herself and working maniacally to achieve them. That's how she got through a tough rehab on her neck, and that's how she's back in peak form now, a threat to win any tournament she enters, just the way it's always been for most of the last dozen years.

"I'm a huge competitor and right now I'm second on the money list," Sorenstam said at her retirement news conference Tuesday. "People that know me know I don't settle for second. I know what to do and I look forward to it. ¿I'm leaving the game on my own terms. I made this decision totally on my own. This is something that came from the heart."

And clearly so did this, from her pal and frequent practice partner, Tiger Woods: He described Sorenstam on Tuesday as "the greatest female golfer of all time. It has been a pleasure watching Annika play for all of these years, but even more of an honor to call her a friend."

The best there ever was? Absolutely, with plenty of greatness still to come this year, and, we can only hope, maybe just a little more after that.

Leonard Shapiro can be reached at len.shapiro@washingtonpost.com.