The original not-quite-hot female athlete that was actually proficient in her sport is about to retire. That would be Sweden’s Annika Sorenstam, playing in her final stateside tournament this weekend. Yeah, for a Swede, she’s almost ugly, but by American standards, she’s kinda cute in that “If she gives me head in the parking lot then I’ll buy her ice cream and never call her again” sort of way.

This week marks the end of the LPGA season at the ADT Championship, which also means that it’s the end of the line for one of golf’s greats. Annika Sorenstam is bringing her stellar, 72-win, 10-major career to a close this year, and the ADT will be her final LPGA appearance. She has two more tournaments scheduled in Singapore and Dubai, and then that’ll be it.

Stellar? Don’t give me tournament wins and major championships. Where are the calendars? The sex tapes? I mean, would it kill her to wear a tank top once in a while? Good riddance, I say. Clear the floor for those sexy, incompetent twentysomethings that have no chance at bringing any sort of respectability to the women’s game. Like that Michelle Whats-her-name. You know she’s begging for it. Maybe.

[Devil Ball Golf]

Coming as a shock to the hundred of fans of his radio show, Tony Kornheiser took a brief break from discussing American Idol. This momentous shift in programming was done so he could announce that he was the latest of dozens of employees that have taken the voluntary buyout from The Washington Post, that redoubtable money-bleeding newspaper he's pretended to write for the last few years.

"All I ever wanted to be was a newspaper writer," he said, which is likely not something that anyone under the age of 30 will ever say again. "This other stuff is great, but I don't care about it," he continued. "In my mind that's what it says on the headstone, it says 'newspaper guy.' "

Awful touching for a guy whose paychecks all now say "radio guy," "TV bloviator," and "Monday Night Football's top Tom Brady fluffer". Not wanting to startle listeners too much, he mixed in his plaintive memories of when The Post mattered with, hey!, Idol.

"There was not enough wine in the world, there wasn't, not last night," he said. "I'm watching 'Idol,' and I'm thinking about all these things, and I don't know who I'm supposed to talk to about this….It just feels odd. It feels odd and it feels bad. It doesn't feel sad, there's no sadness to it, it just feels wrong."

Wow. What a profound loss. Readers will surely miss the two paragraphs he'd toss off for page 2 of the sports section every few days. Or the humorously annotated NCAA bracket every March. I worked for the paper for three years and I never once so much as glimpsed the guy at the office. But he was a presence, boy howdy. Now that damn Paul Farhi can write vapid pieces in the Style section without any fear of reprisal.

In news about people didn't wait 10 years too long to retire: Annika Sorenstam is calling it quits at the end of the year (Oh yeah, and Justine Henin). If you get bored, Annika, you can probably talk golf on a TK's show, so long as you laugh at everything he says and limit any non-Idol discussion to 30 seconds. Were you on Idol, by the way?