Farewell to Annika, Justine

When Annika Sorenstam and Justine Henin announced their early retirements within a day of each other last week, the double thud signaled one of the big differences between women's sports and men's.

Think about this: Sorenstam is 37 years old, the same as Phil Mickelson. Henin is 25, and so is Andy Roddick. Yet it's inconceivable Mickelson will soon retire from competitive golf as Sorenstam plans to do. And it's hard to imagine Roddick (even his current injury-depleted self) is about to walk away from the tennis tour as Henin just did.

It's less shocking when female athletes say goodbye early, with attainable historic accomplishments left undone, and both the reasons for this and the results of this are bittersweet.

The obvious practical matter is that women must stop playing, at least for a while, to have children. Not so with men, which you can understand even if you've never watched Mickelson's family of five celebrate on the 18th green at a major championship.

Still, some golfers, soccer players and basketball players do become mothers and return to action. So I wonder if the temptation for women to chuck the athletic life for good is about something deeper than the childbearing dynamic or at least is more complicated than that.

Sorenstam is within 16 tournament victories of Kathy Whitworth's LPGA-record 88. But she decided to retire at the end of this season, noting that she is engaged to be married for the second time and has begun to muse, "What else is important in life (beyond golf) ...?"

Henin is the first woman tennis player to retire while ranked No. 1 in the world. But she quit effective immediately, saying her tennis career had been "a child's dream" and "it is my life as a woman that starts now."

The implication is that a woman must get away from her sporting life in order to enjoy what culture defines for her as "real" life. Meanwhile, the corresponding man plays on because a long sports career spent stuffing the den with trophies and the bank account with huge cardboard checks is what he's taught is "real" life.

Or maybe this isn't about global gender-role issues. Maybe it's only about the differences between the subcultures of women's and men's sports.

-- Many of the most popular female athletes compete in sports like tennis, gynmastics and figure skating that require intense training in childhood, meaning they experience what must feel like full careers by their 20s. Gymnasts and skaters know their best chances to shine come only once every four years at the Olympics, reducing the incentive to keep at it. And for women, in more sports than for men, there is no professional competition ahead.

I was surprised to see in the celebrity birthday listings the other day that Olga Korbut is 53. It seemed like the star of the 1972 Olympics should be older, but of course she retired at 21.

Swimmer Donna De Varona won two gold medals at the 1964 Olympics and retired from the pool at 17. She was an ABC broadcaster at 18.

-- Perhaps because they're less likely to picture themselves competing professionally, female athletes tend to be more grounded, attentive to schoolwork, prepared for life out of sneakers. That's too bad in one way -- if only more women athletes could count on a pro future. It's laudable in another -- you wish more male athletes had the perspective to prepare for something other than 14 years on the offensive line.

-- To the extent that fans judge female athletes more by their most spectacular moments and their personalities than by their career achievements, there's less incentive to push on and set lifetime marks. Until now, how many people knew Kathy Whitworth holds that LPGA record, let alone that Annika was a few years from catching her?

This is the point Diana Nyad, the swimmer-turned-journalist, hit hard in a commentary on KCRW radio last week.

Nyad said: "There is no arguing that the LPGA does not command the gravitas as does their male counterpart, the PGA. And I can't help but believe that if the women's golf tour were as respected, as high-profile as the men's, Annika would play another decade or so. Thirty-seven to the male champions of the sport is a mere babe in the rough. Jack Nicklaus won his eighteenth major at the age of 46. If Annika the golf insider were as big a brand, as known a personality, as huge a crossover star to the non-sports public as Arnold (Palmer) or The Golden Bear or Tiger (Woods), I do believe she wouldn't be hanging up her tournament clubs at this early juncture in her career. Along with anticipating each year's four majors and counting Tiger's every swing to the day he surpasses Nicklaus, we'd also be counting Annika's."

Nyad said that because it reflects the public's dimmer appreciation of Sorenstam's greatness, her retirement "makes me angry in a way."

Sorenstam's and Henin's departures are sad. They've been among my favorite athletes, blessed with qualities any woman or man dreams of attaining, namely Sorenstam's calm on the golf course and Henin's backhand up the line.

Let's honor Annika and Justine, in what figures to be a big spring and summer for women's sports (Candace Parker's rookie season with the Sparks, Danica Patrick and two other women in Sunday's Indianapolis 500, the Beijing Olympics), by asking ourselves what their early retirements mean and how our own attitudes might have contributed.

Is life letting women get everything they can out of sports? Are sports letting women get everything they deserve out of life?