Why do LPGA professionals walk away early? This is very complicated

It was in a busy elementary school cafeteria when it attacked Brittany Lincicome. The eight-time LPGA Tour winner is volunteering at his daughter’s school, floating in the room, opening chip bags, extracting cheese sticks from those nasty wrappers and helping students throw away the trash. Then she thought: It’s much more fun than playing golf.

That’s not a matter of golf, not a career she chose.

“That was the moment I was looking for, and I thought OK, I’m going to retire. I’m done,“Lacecombe said. “Suddenly, Do you know? No, there is more life. I don’t need to polish it there. I have nothing to prove. ”

Lincicome, 39, is one of the many professionals at LPGA who have announced a full or partial retirement from golf over the past year. Professional golfers aren’t necessarily news, but the number of women who have decided to quit in the past 12 months is shocking, especially since many of them are in their 30s.

“It’s crazy,” Lincoln said. “I can’t even exaggerate all the names.”

She can’t, but we can: Lexi Thompson, Amy Olson, Ally Ewing, Gerina Mendoza, Mariajo Uribe, So Yeon Ryu, Marina Alex, Kyung Kim, Emma Talley. This is not all. 13 players retired from full-time competitions in 2024, with six players 34 or under.

So, what to give?

The answer is simple but complicated: life. For some, retirement means becoming a parent, and for others, it means finding your own opportunities. While LPGA has attracted players to stick with a steady increase in wallets over the years (total of $131 million in 2025), this is from $73 million in 2021, the money also makes it easier for top players to cash out early.

“For myself and my generation, a person who has been playing for 20 years is a thing of the past,” said Lincicome, a mother of two and a regular at the LPGA Mobile Child Development Center, where players and employees can get parenting on the road. “I don’t think girls are playing that long anymore. Ten years later, like, OK, we’re done.”

Ewing, 32, is one of the best seasons of his career in 2024. She has only one layoff in 19 games and has recorded six top 10, three of which are professional. But she had other things she wanted to accomplish. Ewing and her husband Charlie adopted a dog, Rusty, a Nova Scotia duck ticket hunter. In February, Rusty was placed next to an ultrasound photo and a one-piece. Ewing is pregnant.

Olson, 31, officially announced his retirement in April 2024 seven months after giving birth to her daughter Carly. Retirement has always been a plan, and Olson and her husband Grant first talk about how they looked when they were dating.

“It makes it easier for the years of sacrifices we’ve been traveling,” Olson said. “It’s always in our minds to know that this is temporary and know that we’re trying to enable ourselves to achieve the stage we’re entering now.”

Parenthood is also a factor in the lives of PGA Tour players, but Justin Thomas, Rickie Fowler and Scottie Scheffler are just to name a few of the latest dads on the Tour, but aren’t hanging in the hang of soft spikes. In fact, for many top men in professional players, fathers are seen as competitive Advantages. Many men only start to peak when most LPGA players start in the second half of their careers. The average age of the top ten male players in golf is 30.9; the top 10 women are 25.6, not north of the 30-year-old.

These guys have another reason to stick with it: a lucrative late tour. The PGA Tour champion is suitable for more than 50 players, with nearly 30 events arranged each year, and most of the wallets exceed $2 million. LPGA legends have female equivalents often held one-third, and rarely exceed $400,000. The age requirement for Legendary Journey is 45, although there are topics that are reduced to 40.

Be clear, Women’s golf has more to early retirement. A teenage phenomenon Michelle Wie West retired in 2023 at the age of 33, and after five LPGA victories and injuries, history seems to be a lifelong review. She was shocked by the 2024 wave of retirees, but she said these things are in stages.

“In general, female athletes – I think our trajectory is different from male athletes,” West said. “We have a biological clock and we need to think about something. Speaking for ourselves, I played a role in the 50s and 60s was unsustainable, and it was a personal decision I made.”

Similarly, Lexi Thompson, 30, has been in the public eye for nearly two decades, when in May 2024 she announced her decision to leave her full-time schedule. She started competing at the age of seven and competed in the first women’s open in the United States at the age of 12. For her, it wasn’t just golf that became too much, but everything else: practice, travel, sponsor obligations, loneliness and stress. For all highs, there are too many lows. Her decision was a decision over the years, bringing relief.

“It’s time to be able to go to bed at night at night without worrying about the next day, how I’m acting and how I feel – or how people will see me – so,” Thompson told Golf last summer. “Just make me think of my mental close, be satisfied with myself; don’t have to act and be this perfect person – that’s what I’m most looking forward to.”

Friday in late February at 10 a.m. Lorena Ochoa reviews a busy morning. From her office desk 90 minutes outside of Mexico City, she realized that her three children left school that day, caught her off guard.

“I think it’s going to be a quiet morning,” she joked.

Before this latest batch of LPGA retirees made headlines, Ochoa was the most famous early appearance of LPGA. When she suddenly announced her retirement in 2010, she was the highest-ranked player in the world.

In just six years on the LPGA Tour, Ochoa won 27 times, including two majors. In her 183 LPGA start, she finished first, second or third 34% of the time. When she retired, she had become a hall of fame lock. But, why exit?

“I’m ready to move on,” she said. “I’m ready to go all the other activities. I know I’m young and only 28 years old. I’m strong physically and mentally, it’s probably my best time. But when you no longer get this spark or get this excitement and motivation, you start to get these mixed feelings in your mind. Then your priorities start to change.”

Fifteen years later, Ochoa did not regret it. She is deeply involved in her Lorena Ochoa Foundation, which, among other things, has funded 360 impoverished children in Guadalajara. She is active with her sponsors and learns to enjoy “bad golf”. She builds golf courses and loves cycling, running and hiking. Now, she used to invest the same energy, motivation and commitment to golf, too, stepping into these new passions. Her three children also keep her busy: they play golf, football and tennis.

“I’m happy to say that I made the right decision and sometimes you have to take a leap of faith,” Ochoa said. “You don’t know what will happen, but you’ll be surprised because there are a lot of great and beautiful things outside of golf. I think I’ve proved it because I’m satisfied with myself. I feel peaceful.”

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