LPGA players share thoughts on both retirement and what keeps them going

If Lydia Ko feels like there have been more retirements than ever, it’s because, well, there have been.

Since last year’s season opener in Orlando, where the LPGA’s winners are again gathered this week for the Hilton Grand Vacations Tournament of Champions, no fewer than 13 players have retired from full-time professional golf, from 47-year-old Angela Stanford to 29-year-old Lexi Thompson, who is still entertaining a limited schedule this year.

If that’s not a record, certainly having six out of that group aged 34 years or younger is.

“It’s surprising, but at the same time it’s not,” Ko told GolfChannel.com last month at Lake Nona Golf and Country Club, where she’s a member. “As female athletes, especially if you want to have a family, there’s much more to life than just golf, right? I think there are a lot of different variables on why the players made their decisions.

“I’m sure I’m going to be in their shoes at some point down the road.”

Ko shocked many by declaring in 2015 that she didn’t plan on competing past age 30. The recently crowned Hall of Famer, who married in 2022, turns 28 this April, meaning, barring a change of heart, she has three full LPGA seasons in her before she shifts focus to a second act, likely in psychology. Ko looks at her 35-year-old friends on tour, Amy Yang and Jennifer Song, and sees those types of careers becoming less common in a league that while increasingly lucrative (over $131 million in total prize money this season) is also noticeably deeper and more demanding.

“They love it,” Ko said. “I don’t love golf that much.”

Ko won her first LPGA title in 2012, as an amateur, and joined the tour two years later, so she’s spanned basically three generations of players with her career. One of four players who have passed the $20 million mark, Ko is fourth in career money – and just $2,439,712 behind No. 1 Annika Sorenstam, who, at 38 and after 17 seasons, retired in 2008. When Ko was a rookie, the No. 50 finisher on the money list pocketed $324,439 that season. That haul would’ve ranked No. 87 last season while the most recent No. 50, Thompson, brought home $811,501, not much less than Kathy Whitworth’s career on-course number ($871,296), which included an LPGA-record 88 titles from 1962-85.

Jeeno Thitikul, just 21, set a single-season tour record last year earning $6,059,309, which alone slots in at No. 68 on the all-time money list. Even Nataliya Guseva, another 21-year-old, but one who’s yet to win an LPGA event, is already nearly a millionaire ($986,209). And recently added perks such as missed-cut pay, host housing and courtesy cars further boost the player’s bottom line.

It’s a far cry from the old days, when players would pass around hats in locker rooms to collect money for retired players struggling to make ends meet.

“Having the financial means to be home, that’s a big part of [players retiring earlier],” Madelene Sagstrom said. “When I started, if you had to pack it up, you’d have to go work right away. Most people probably wouldn’t have to do that right now.”

Added Alena Sharp: “The money is good enough that players don’t have to keep going.”

Sharp joined the LPGA two decades ago. Now nearly 44, she remains obsessed with the grind, evident by her regaining her card via Q-School last December after a crazy year in which the Canadian veteran started on the Epson Tour and qualified for the Olympics. She’s overcome the putting yips on multiple occasions, too. But even Sharp is ready to take her next step.

This will be her final LPGA season before she transitions to teaching, launching her foundation in support of Alzheimer’s research, and eventually some senior tournaments.

“Honestly, I’m not having as much fun as I used to have,” Sharp said last November. “I still love this game, I still love the tour, but when a lot of your friends are gone or not out here as much, and you’re one of the older ones, it’s not as much fun.”

Sharp worries about younger players, who only know a sport always on the move, running from late January to late November while stopping 34 times in 11 different countries. It used to be, Sharp says, that mostly caddies walked the course on Mondays. Now, it’s an arms race, with teams burgeoning to include parents, agents, instructors, mental coaches, trainers, nutritionists and, in many cases, more than that – and that’s down the points list. Some players travel regularly with their significant others, including Lauren Coughlin and Kaitlyn Papp Budde, who each have their husbands as caddies, but that’s not the norm.

“When I first started, I was 21, and I just wanted to play until I couldn’t. But that was before I started to see the lifestyle on the LPGA … and then it got more realistic,” said Cheyenne Knight, now 28 and engaged to San Diego Chargers quarterback Easton Stick.

Plus, the tour is as cutthroat as it’s ever been. The scoring leader last season averaged 69.33 while No. 100 finished at a 72.0 clip, which would rank No. 33 in 2012, when No. 100 averaged 73.71.

“I worry about burnout with some of these players,” Sharp said.

Marina Alex, 34, was part of this recent influx of retirements. Alex shared with LPGA.com that she was “down in the dumps” in late 2023 but decided to give herself another year, hoping to go out like Suzann Pettersen did when she retired moments after sinking the Solheim Cup-winning putt in 2019. Alex nearly won her third LPGA title at the Toto Japan Classic last October, a victory, she admitted, that probably would’ve been a walk-off.

“I don’t want to whine and say this life is terrible; it’s amazing, and we know that, but it’s challenging, it’s hard,” Alex said. “… I’m proud of sticking it out probably maybe a little bit longer than I mentally wanted to, if I’m being honest.”

Added Sagstrom, who married longtime boyfriend Jack Clarke last September: “This game, this lifestyle, it wears and tears on you. Even myself, I don’t have the mindset of playing for much longer than two or three more years. … I’ve always said that until I love something else more, I’m going to keep doing this. I want to have a family, and then I’d love my family more than golf.”

• • •

THOMPSON IS WIDELY CONSIDERED the LPGA’s off-the-course model, the last to leave the pro-am parties, the first to take on a junior clinic. But as Thompson knows, perhaps better than anybody, with more sponsors come more sponsor obligations.

“Honestly,” Thompson said last year, “just feeling like I don’t have to go somewhere or be anywhere, and just do nothing, that will be nice for a little bit.”

Not that Thompson will actually be doing nothing. She’s already entered into the second LPGA event of the season, the Founders Cup in Bradenton, Florida; Thompson lives in South Florida. She also got engaged on Jan. 2 and recently launched her Lexi Fitness app, one of many expected future endeavors (think Sorenstam, who has long told players, “You’d be amazed the things you can do and stay in golf. … You can find joy outside of the ropes.”).

Certainly, the 29-year-old Thompson can relate to Lorena Ochoa when Ochoa, upon retiring in 2010 at just 28 (and as the standing world No. 1), said, “I’m ready to start a new life.” (Ochoa’s upgraded her clubs maybe once since then, her countrywoman, 26-year-old LPGA player Maria Fassi, says.)

“I don’t want to have a family and play professional golf,” Thompson added.

In her first three years after quitting professional golf, Ochoa married and welcomed her first child; she now has three. Sorenstam had the first of her two kids within a year of hanging it up, and she’d take 13 years off to focus on family, her foundation and several businesses before returning to limited competition at the 2021 U.S. Senior Women’s Open, which she won. Last May, Amy Olson, after racking up $2,669,569 in 196 LPGA starts, opted not to return from her first maternity leave, calling it her “biggest dream” to be a world-class mom and wife. And most recently, Emma Talley, 30, announced she was both expecting and retiring.

Ally Ewing, 32, already has one of those tasks in the rearview, having competed for the final time at last year’s CME Group Tour Championship, which capped one of her best seasons – five top-5s, two of those in majors, and a fourth Solheim Cup nod, this one finally resulting in victory.

Ewing shared her wish to settle down with her husband of almost five years, Charlie Ewing, the head women’s golf coach at Mississippi State (Ally’s alma mater), at the start of last season. They mostly kept it secret until October, when Ally announced. By then, she was already being called “Mama Bear” by her Solheim teammates. (The Lady Bulldogs may have to borrow that nickname now.)

The plan, Charlie says, allowed Ally to perform with a great deal of gratitude. Ally called it a peaceful season.

“She told me, ‘I want to go out playing my best,’” Charlie said. “This has been exactly what she wanted. She sees a lot of things she misses in life – family, my career, her friends and their families. … She’s devoted so much of her life to golf that it’s time to close the book on golf and invest in different areas of life.”

Added Ally: “I’m an all-in type of person. If I have kids, my perspective is going to change, and I would be more 50/50, and that’s just not who I am. I’ve always viewed myself as more than a golfer. I have so many people who love me regardless of my score. Regardless of what this year brought, I was going to be satisfied with the career I had.

“Being with family and starting our own family is what I look forward to most.”

• • •

WORLD GOLF HALL OF FAMER Juli Inkster always said her most impressive accomplishment was winning tournaments while traveling with two kids. Of her 31 career victories, 18 came as a mom, as did four of her seven major trophies. But Inkster also won just twice between the births of her first daughter, Hayley, and second, Cori, four years later. Inkster then took three more years to win again.

Around that time, the LPGA created the LPGA Child Development Center, which for the last two decades has been directed by the same woman, Bardine May, though it did lose its longtime sponsor, Smucker’s, last year.

“We want to keep the moms out here as much as we can by making it as easy for them as we can,” said Ricki Lasky, the LPGA’s chief tour business and operations officer.

That mission includes a revamped maternity policy, which rolled out in 2019 after much input from LPGA moms Stacy Lewis, the most recent to win on tour (2020 Ladies Scottish Open), and Brittany Lincicome, a mother of two who retired from full-time competition last fall once her oldest, Emery, began kindergarten and Lincicome realized she loved volunteering in the school lunchroom more than playing on the LPGA.

The flexible policy allows athletes to take maternity leave in the year of the child’s birth, the year after, and in certain limited circumstances, the year prior to the child’s birth. Moms have up to two years from the date of the baby’s birth to return to playing, and upon returning retain the same status with which they left for 12 months.

Many sponsors have also stepped up to pay players through maternity leave.

Currently, the LPGA has 16 moms with status in Category 1-16, or 19. That mostly includes players with newborns, toddlers, or who are still on maternity leave such as Inbee Park, 36, who hasn’t played since August 2022 while welcoming babies in 2023 (Inseo) and 2024 (Rio); and Jessica Korda, 31, who stepped away in May 2023 because of a back injury and then gave birth to son, Greyson, in February 2024. Korda is aiming to return in 2026 while Park hasn’t revealed whether she plans a comeback. Lindsey Weaver-Wright had son Crew in December 2023. She was playing again by late March and despite finishing last season No. 142 in points, she begins 2025 with Category 1 status.

“It shows that you can do it if that’s what you want,” Coughlin said. “If you want to keep playing, you can.”

When Brittany Altomare got pregnant with her son, Wyatt, she was unsure about continuing her playing career. But her college coach at Virginia, Kim Lewellen, who is now at Wake Forest, helped Altomare feel like she could do anything, and so, Altomare gave birth last March 7 and by mid-July she was teeing it up in an Epson Tour event.

Altomare figured the tournament a perfect tune-up to a late-season return to the LPGA, but after playing 29 holes the final day because of a weather delay, she realized she probably should take more time.

“It was way too early,” said Altomare, who tied for 65th. “I didn’t have my strength or speed back. Wyatt wasn’t sleeping through the night. … But I was still impressed with how well I did with how I felt, and I was like, OK, I can do this.”

Altomare’s first LPGA start back will be, in all places, Thailand for the first of three Asian events. She didn’t expect to get in, though with the wave of retirements, she did. It will be the longest that she has been away from her little boy, but when the schedule returns stateside in late March, Wyatt will travel with mom as the newest CDC enrollee.

Altomare’s goal for this season is to be patient and give herself plenty of grace.

“There’s so much pride in being a mom on tour,” Altomare said. “You do sacrifice a lot when you decide to have a family. Your hormones are all over the place, your body changes, and now you’re responsible for taking care of a baby. Even the mental load of postpartum has been a lot harder than I originally anticipated as well. You go through a lot, so women who can come back and be successful as an athlete, I think it’s pretty incredible and inspiring to watch.”

It’s much different than a PGA Tour pro returning to action after the birth of their child. Some LPGA players have had to rebuild their swings during and after pregnancy. One player, Sagstrom noted, even went from playing a fade her whole career to hitting a draw.

The unique challenges don’t stop, either.

Azahara Munoz politely declined an interview for this story. She knows that at 37 and as the mom of an almost 3-year-old, she’ll be announcing her retirement sooner rather than later. She finished No. 111 in points last season, though successfully kept her status via Q-School, the first time she’s had to do that since joining the LPGA in 2010. At last summer’s Founders Cup, Munoz’s son, Lucas, kicked off the week sick and with a rough night of sleep before falling and nearly cutting his eye the day before the tournament.

“And then she has to go play against Ronnie Yin (22),” Sagstrom adds.

Munoz went on to miss the cut.

“I never want to use it as an excuse, but it is hard,” Munoz told Golfweek. “You are more tired. All these girls are 20, 21, 22, obviously dedicating their 100% to the game, and we are dedicating the time we have, and the time you have you might not be feeling super fantastic either because you maybe didn’t have a super good night of sleep or whatever. You have an afternoon tee time and I’ve been in the park with Lukey for two hours, so I’m already tired.

“At the end of the day you wouldn’t trade it for the world, either.”

Unsurprisingly, that sentiment is universal.

Lewis’ daughter, Chesnee, will turn 7 this October. Lewis’ husband, Gerrod Chadwell, is the head women’s golf coach at Texas A&M. It’s rare that all three are together with Lewis competing, though family photos with the Solheim Cup or Chesnee asking mom a question during Lewis’ press conference at last summer’s AIG Women’s Open at St. Andrews makes up for it.

If you win, can we get a pool?

“Back in 2013, golf was No. 1 on the list,” Lewis said. “Everything I ate, everything I did, how I slept, the amount I slept, everything revolved around playing good golf. And now, my daughter is No. 1 on that list, so golf gets kind of shoved down there a little bit, and so it changes. But it also changes your perspective in that, you know, bad rounds, they don’t bother me as much as they used to.”

Jennifer Kupcho used to think she’d quit professional golf, then have kids. Now, it’s the opposite.

“You always see the men, when they win, their kids are running out onto the green to greet them,” said Kupcho, whose husband, Jay Monahan (not the PGA Tour commissioner), caddies on tour for Allisen Corpuz. “I think that would be really special. That’s one of my goals.”

Altomare echoed that dream.

“I get emotional just talking about it,” she said.

• • •

EVERY PLAYER WHO SPOKE for this story agreed: There will likely never be another Stanford, who saw her LPGA-record streak of 98 consecutive major appearances snapped last year.

Stanford, whose seven LPGA wins include the 2018 Evian Championship, made her final start at last November’s Lotte Championship in Hawaii, where on the Monday of tournament week she decided to do some putting practice after lunch. She gathered her balls, marker, headphones, and headed down the clubhouse stairs and some 500 yards to the practice green.

“Get out there, and I don’t have a putter,” Stanford recalled. “I’m like, I think it’s time.”

Then you have someone like Rachel Kuehn.

The Wake Forest product is far away from retirement, a 23-year-old rookie after staying amateur to tee it up in a third and final Curtis Cup last summer. She’s affable, smart, supremely talented. And though she’s aware that women’s athletic careers are “inevitably shorter” than those of their male counterparts, she states that she has no 10-year plan, or the like.

“Right now, I want to make Solheims, and win majors, and be No. 1 in the world,” Kuehn said. “And I’m just getting started.”

Ah, to be young.