Golf Central

These days players rarely retire, they just keep on playing well into their dotage. That's probably why Annika Sorenstam's decision to pack it in at the end of this LPGA season seems like relatively dramatic news.

Just look at her achievements - 72 tournament victories including 10 Majors (banking over $22million in the process). She averaged a record average score of 68.69 in 2004 and was the first woman since 1945 to compete alongside the men on The PGA Tour in the 2003 Colonial. She will also be remembered as the only woman to score 59 in tournament history. All that leaves her third on the LPGA Tour's career list behind Kathy Whitworth (88) and Mickey Wright (82) and tied for fourth in career Majors.

Last weekend she won the Michelob Ultra Tournament at Kingsmill by seven shots, courtesy of a cracking final round 66. She plans to marry Jerry McGhee in 2009.

"I think I've achieved more than I ever thought I could," she said during a press conference earlier this week; and it's difficult to argue with  the greatest women golfer of recent times.