Thankfully, because of the testimony by “Mistress Switch,” we can now put to rest any official connection between Formula One racing and ####-themed spanking parties. What a relief. Now the only thing that Max Mosley has to worry about is turning more tricks for Dino Ferrari.

The F-1 president with an alleged Luftwaffe and whipped cream fetish has brought suit against the British tabloid, News of the World, after it reported that he and five members of the International Sisterhood of Late-night Horizontal Laborers had engaged in some Third Reich role playing. Mosley corrected the story, saying that while he is a fan of S&M, M&M’s and even STP — should the boys at Ferrari deem it worthy of consumption — that he and his consorts at no time entered into #### role playing and that such dark practices are reserved for judgments against McLaren.

Just to clarify things, Mosley and his colleagues were just taking part in an adult version of cowboys and Indians, said Switch, where the prisoner is roughly rehabilitated by busty guards with bull whips in a fantasy role play imagined by everyone at Stalag 13 and involving Helga and Hilda. That is, when the twin salutes to Germanic temptation weren’t hooking up with Col. Hogan.

Striking a blow against the customary rules of absolute discretion that sent shock waves through the titillation industry was the revelation that one of the participants, known as “E” in court documents, taped the nasty affair for the tabloid. The badly shot video shows the rather conservative-dressed “mistress” searching the boss of the multibillion-dollar racing organization for lice and punishing him for a history of unstated crimes, followed by poorly acted warnings of future such treatment. Evidently, Mosley has been a very, very bad boy. However, unlike the tunnel-digging leader of the allied espionage experts, Mosley was allowed to turn the physical tables and provide some back-pocket bruising to his jailers, who suddenly appear in Keystone Kop era prison garb. Seems the German penal system is as good as our own when it comes to rehabilitation.

Switch, the evening’s events coordinator, told the High Court that Mosley is hardly a degenerate and that he, in fact, has more in common with Col. Klink, the dim but not evil Prussian social climber, rather than Maj. Hochstetter, the often angry Gestapo leader who always chaffed at Hogan’s free-range entrance into his captor’s office. As convincing as Miss Switch is in matters of proper social behavior, her take on her former prisoner bears examination as it has long been recognized that Klink, who hated to part with even a single Lagergeld, would cough up the equivalent of $4,953 just to get butt-whopped when Gen. Burkhalter gladly provided the service for free.

It remains to be seen if Mosley will be successful in his lawsuit. The monetary award being sought has not been announced, but the scuttlebutt around the hot wax dispenser has Mosley asking for $25,000, or five spankings, while re-enacting the Malta Conference.

One area in which he has been successful is fighting off calls for his firing. A June 3 vote over confidence in his leadership was returned 103-55 in his favor, and it appears that at least for now the only spanking he’ll take is by high gas prices and a bad economy that may force teams to trim their 1,000-person payrolls. This won’t be easy, considering F-1 is introducing hybrid technology next year to reduce emissions with the hope of lowering fuel usage 50 percent by 2015.

Though #### was present at his father's wedding in Joseph Goebbels’ drawing room — true story — Mosley’s hold on the job seems as secure as the Eva Braun Stirrup Swing and Truss Bar — Blondi Collars free with purchases of $50 or more. So unless the News can prove its accusations or if Mosley’s PR firm cannot spin a better tale than they did for Heather Mills, the Formula One boss will continue to run racing and take his costly lumps with pleasure and chains.

It was, without need of useless embellishment or extended prose, one of the most impressive athletic achievements in recent memory — if not in the history of American sports. We’ll let others argue about golf’s merit as a sport and whether or not golfers qualify as athletes. Coming off his third knee surgery and after playing only one round in two months — and that from a cart — Tiger Woods put on the greatest performance of his career while fighting through pain so obvious he was often forced to turn $500 drivers into expensive walking sticks. The achievement became even more impressive in the days that followed.

Known to only a trusted few, Tiger played not only with a knee still weak from cartilage surgery but a torn ACL and double stress fracture in his tibia. To do all this while walking a straight line distance of 21.7 miles — and much farther after tracking down sprayed tee shots and the constant circling of the greens — makes Tiger 91-hole performance simply mind boggling.

A person could go broke quickly betting against Tiger, and even though doctors are predicting a full recovery, nothing is guaranteed. If Woods cannot return to his familiar form, the 37-hole battle with journeyman and good friend Rocco Mediate shifts from historical to legendary. Granted, the worst is unlikely to happen.

Tiger has no concerns about proper HMO coverage and his doctors will be talented and wealthy. But to say he’ll be dominant as ever with absolutely no ill effects would ignore the history of such injuries. It is true that many athletes have returned from serious knee injury, but many, if not most, come back forever changed.

Much like Frank Tanana, who once dominated hitters with pure speed only to be forced to learn the art of the breaking ball after injuries took away his strength, Tiger, upon his return, may have to change his swing to limit the massive amount of torque he puts on his newly reconstructed knee. The good news is that no one is more capable of making such a dramatic shift. He did that very thing four years ago to limit the stress on his knee and became an even better golfer.

So, for the time being, the news is relatively positive for the world’s No. 1 golfer. His tour, however, may not be so lucky.

No other sport’s success is so tied into a single person. It’s simple. As goes Tiger, so goes the PGA Tour. According to the New York Times, TV numbers a year ago dropped 29 percent when Woods took the week off. His presence means huge gates and great interest. A lack of Tiger sightings means greater disinterest. The tour must learn how to live without Woods a decade before it ever hoped.

Commissioner Tim Finchem has some selling to do. He needs to find a way to lure in a portion of Tiger’s massive audience. There is no way he’s going to get all of them and that’s going to be a challenge for a sport with a general household recognition of one athlete.

The tour is not without talent or interesting characters, as Rocco proved. It is, however, short of top-ranked Americans — and that’s what matters to the U.S. audience upon which the tour depends. Internationally, it will be easier. Phil Mickelson is immensely popular, but he’s one of only three Americans in the top 10 of the world golf rankings. The other is Jim Furyk.

An additional problem the tour must overcome is trying to convince the public that all future wins this year are not tainted by the absence of the man who will likely retain his top spot in the rankings even if he doesn’t tee it up until the spring of 2009. Mickelson, with three majors, will be able to escape such criticism but any member of the “best-to-have-never-won-a-major” will be doomed to the same second guessing and dismissals that the Houston Rockets received after winning two titles during Michael Jordan’s absence.

Tiger, like him or not, will be missed. No one generates greater buzz or makes more impossible shots than he. It is now the tour’s job to let you know the well is not dry. Good luck with that.

For a person unfamiliar with the sport of mixed martial arts, its first foray into primetime network coverage produced an easy-to-understand educational package that hinted at the sports strengths but was mostly bogged down by the hurdles it has yet to clear.

No matter how much promoters want to pump the sport as the next big thing to nip at the heels of established American athletic competition, Elite XC and CBS recognized that MMA remains mostly an unknown oddity to the general populous with few marketable stars. Faced with the choice of highlighting either a talented, yet basically unknown fighter or someone short on experience but long on name recognition and charisma, it didn’t take long for the powers that be to determine who would lead the fight for mainstream America.

Had the night ended with middleweight champion “Ruthless” Robbie Lawler and challenger Scott Smith, the network’s gutsy move into attracting younger viewers would have paid off with the best contest of the night and the possibility of a title changing hands. Advertisers, however, would have been less pleased. Though the fight gained viewers each half hour during the telecast, ratings jumped nearly 50 percent when the attention turned to YouTube legend Kimbo Slice.

Fighting tomato ear James “The Colossus” Thompson — who was ahead on every card before the fight was stopped at the most opportune time — the star’s lack of experience was readily apparent. So much so that the pro-Kimbo crowd booed the headliner as he tried to explain himself during the post-fight interview — which he cut short due to conditioning so poor he could not even carry on a conversation some five to 10 minutes after the fight had ended.

The choice of Kimbo’s opponent did nothing to lure new fans. Thompson is little better than his first two hand-picked opponents (a fat Tank Abbot and even fatter Ray Mercer) who were nothing more than one-minute punching bags to practice his haymakers on. Thompson, the former Pride fighter — think a Toughman contest but with less personality — came into the fight with seven losses in his previous nine fights. Unable to wound his opponent with slow punches, Thompson tried to take Slice off his feet by leading with his face. He eventually succeeded only to have the ring announcers gush over Kimbo’s DDT-style take down and how “Kimbo Slice made his name in the streets but right now he’s fighting a veteran mixed martial artist.” Such hype ignored the fact that neither fighter brought anything worthwhile to the match and that Thompson had even lost to King Kong Bundy lookalike Butterbean.

Neither fighter deserved a starring role. Anyone tuning in for practiced ground skills, thrown combinations and even the most rudimentary footwork that enables a fighter to stay away from slow-moving punishment was surely disappointed. But quality fighting was not what this night was about. May 31 was about selling tickets and putting on a spectacle, and Elite XC and CBS did just that. They had their title fight, they had their circus act and they preceeded both with a couple of Muay Thai fighters who just happened to be female, attractive and far better fighters than the headliners.

Brett “The Grim” Roberts, who won an undercard bout to improve his record to 7-0, spoke for established fans when he called the Slice/Thompson fight “garbage” and said Kimbo’s performance was “unacceptable for the fans.”

Boxing, the only martial mainstay in the U.S. for 150 years, lies waiting helpless as it continues to be watered down by 17 weight divisions separated by as little as three pounds and enough governing bodies to make the most ardent fan confused about title holders.

MMA is dealing with many of the same problems. Talent is so spread out among the dozens of organizations promoting the sport that it is extremely difficult to produce a card that is not loaded with second-tier fighters and “legends” with .500 records.

The alphabet soup of organizations will continue to #### the development of the sport until the more successful are either able to buy out the competition, as UFC did with Pride Fighting Championship, or economic disadvantage thins the herd. Diversity and choice is great in a democracy but lousy when it comes to professional sports.

The institution of a universal ranking system would be a big move forward and give fans a way to reference fighters. Most important, promoters must retire near staged events like the Slice/Thompson fight and banish WWE-style hysteria that list Yves Edwards' fighting style as “thugjistsu.”

Handled correctly, MMA could supplant boxing, but it’s not going to happen with gimics.

Sports fans love to hold onto their heroes even after their effectiveness has become a long-departed memory. After years of living vicariously through their athletic exploits, dealing with retirement talk can be difficult. It’s upsetting enough when the announcement comes after gray hair has replaced that of a darker hue. But when it comes amidst the prime of an athlete’s career, it’s just shocking.

Such is the case with Annika Sorenstam, this generation’s greatest female golfer and arguably the best ever, said that following this season she will give up the sport she’s dominated for more than a decade.

While women’s golf does not have the broad national impact of the NFL or Major League Baseball, Sorenstam’s decision to leave her sport at age 37 has a greater connection to early exits in those sports than to Justine Henin, who just became the first female tennis player to retire while ranked No. 1 in the world. Like Sandy Koufax and Jim Brown, who both aborted their respective careers at the age of 30, Sorenstam defines her sport and is the standard-bearer for all who come after. Just as every left-hander is compared to Koufax and each running back to Brown, any woman with talent and desire who comes along in the foreseeable future will be chasing the ghost of Sorenstam.

And if there is one more recent athlete who can appreciate what the 5-foot-6-inch Swede is giving up, it may be a 5-foot-8-inch former tailback from Wichita. Barry Sanders left the game when the pressure of defeat became a burden so great that it dwarfed any desire to chase immortality.

Minus an injury-filled 2007 in which she recorded only one victory, Sorenstam had no such concerns of mounting loses. But like Sanders, who gave up the game a season removed from claiming the all-time rushing title, Sorenstam has decided to leave within eyesight of topping Kathy Whitworth in wins and Patty Berg in majors.

Sorenstam achieved the rare feat of becoming a one-name celebrity — a surprising accomplishment for the reluctant star who, for most of her career, was uncomfortable in front of the camera, keeping to herself a smart and humorous personality that hid a burning desire to win.

Though she always said the right thing, Annika never took losses lightly. Each one just made her more determined to further distance herself from the competition and if victory meant putting some verbal pressure on an opponent, then so be it. Going into her 2007 playoff against Meaghan Francella, the young 25-year-old golfer asked the seasoned pro what ball she was hitting. Sorenstam’s intimidation-laden reply of “a Titleist 59” was not lost on the younger golfer. One of Annika’s greatest feats was her LPGA record round of 59 she shot in 2001.
Proof that the imposing legacy of the former world’s No. 1 has not waned was clearly evident when Sorenstam found herself in a playoff with Paula Creamer at this year’s Stanford Invitational Pro-Am. Creamer admitted that her hands shaking while putting on the first playoff hole. Sorenstam, unfazed, calmly sank the putt for her 71st LPGA win.

Over her 16-year career, Annika not only dominated her sport, but was perhaps the world’s most recognizable female athlete. She turned pro in 1992 and the next year was named the Ladies European Tour’s Rookie of the Year. A season later, now teeing it up on the LPGA Tour, she did the same. In her second year as a full-time member on the ladies’ toughest tour, Annika scored three wins and 12 top 10 finishes in 19 events while capturing her first Major and becoming the No. 1-ranked female golfer — a title she would claim eight more times in the following 11 years. She was also named LPGA Player of the Year after leading both the LPGA and European Tours’ winnings.

Over the next 13 years, she would win 69 more times on the LPGA Tour and claim nine more Majors. She was 22-11-4 in Solheim Cup matches, landed seven more Player of the Year honors, was the AP Female Athlete of the Year three times, she won an ESPY for the Best Female Golfer five times and, in 2005 and 2006, won two more ESPYs for Best Female Athlete.

Now, healthy, confident and with three wins in her first eight tournaments this year, she’s giving it up to start the family she’s wanted for several years and to watch over her ever-growing business interests, including her ANNIKA Academy, a blossoming golf course design business, stock and real estate investments.
Fellow Hall of Famer Nancy Lopez, who also left the game in her prime to start a family, said the business world is a poor substitute for the pure thrill of athletic competition — especially for someone as competitive as Annika or herself. Lopez eventually returned and no one should be surprised if in a half dozen years Sorenstam returns to reclaim what had been hers for the taking.