Why are they leaving the LPGA pro away? Is complex

It was in a busy elementary school bar, of all countries, when Brittany Lincicome struck. The winner of the eight times LPGA Tour was voluntary in her daughter’s school, navigating the room, opening bags with chips, extracting cheese sticks from those annoying wrappers and helping students throw their trash. And then she had a thought: This is much more enjoyable than hitting golf balls.

This would not be a matter if golf was not her chosen profession.

“This is the moment I had asked, and I was like, Okay, I’m retired. I have finished,“Lincicome says.” Suddenly was like, You know what? No. There are more in life. I don’t need to be there grinding. I have nothing to try”

Lincicome, 39, was one of the many pro LPGA that announced their full or partial golf pension in the past year. Professional golfists leaving the game are not necessarily news, but the number of women who decided to go out in the last 12 months was very high shocking, especially since so many are in their 30s.

“It’s been crazy,” says Lincicome. “I can’t even remove all names.”

It can’t, but we can: Lexi Thompson, Amy OlsonAlly Ewing, Gerina Mendoza, Marijo Uribe, SO Yeon Ryu, Marina Alex, in Kyung Kim, Emma Talley. And that’s not all of them. Thirteen players withdrew from full-time game in 2024 and six were 34 or younger.

So what does it give?

The answer is simple but complicated: life. For some, pension means becoming a parent, for others, means the opportunity to find themselves. And while the LPGA has attracted players to stay around the game with constant growing bags over the years – up to $ 131 million in total in 2025, from $ 73 million to 2021 – money has also made it easier for the best players to make money.

“For myself and my generation, someone who plays for 20 years is a thing of the past,” says Lincicome, who, as a mother of two, was regular at the Mobile LPGA Children’s Development Center, where players and staff have access to children’s care. “I don’t think girls play longer. After 10 years. It’s like, well, we’re done.”

Ewing, 32, had one of the best seasons of her career in 2024. She lost only one cut in 19 Starters and recorded six 10 best, three of them in degrees. But she had other things she wanted to accomplish. Ewing and her husband, Charlie, adopted a dog, an attractive Nova Scotia Duck named Rusty. In February, Rusty posed next to an ultrasound photo and one unit. Ewing was pregnant.

Olson, at the age of 31, officially announced her retirement in April 2024, seven months after she gave birth to her daughter, Carly. Retirement was always the plan, and Olson and her husband, Grant, first talked about how they would look when they met.

“This made it easier for the sacrifice for the number of years we made when I was traveling all the time,” Olson says. “Knowing that it was temporary and knowing we were trying to settle down to be able to have this phase we are moving now was always in the back of our minds.”

Parents’ factors in the lives of PGA Tour’s players, too, but Justin Thomas, Rickie Fowler and Scottie Scheffler – to mention just some of the youngest fathers of the tour – have not been fought with their soft points. In fact, for many of the best men in the pros, paternity is seen as something of a competitive ADVANTAGE. Many men just start to reach their peak about age when most LPGA players are in the back half of their careers. The average age of the top 10 golf players is 30.9; 25.6 is 25.6 for the top 10 women, and none is in the north of 30 years.

Men have another reason to stay around: a lucrative tourist tournament. PGA Tour champions, for players over 50, sets nearly 30 events each year, most with bags over $ 2 million. The female equivalent, the LPGA legends, mounts the events one -third so often and rarely has bags exceeding $ 400,000. The demand for the age for the Legends tour is 45, though he has spoken about his reduction to 40. Lincicome, who would like another opportunity to play competitively down the road, would be everything for him.

Be clear, There is more for early retirement in women’s golf. Once teenagers phenomenon Michelle Like West Retired in 2023, at the age of 33, after five LPGA victories, a story of annoying and seemingly a life of control. She was somewhat shocked by the 2024 retirees wave, but these things, she says, come in stages.

“Female sneakers, in general – I think we just live a different trajectory than male athletes,” Wie West said. “We have a biological hour, and there are things we have to consider. Speaking of myself, it was not stable for me to play in the 50s and 60s, and that was a personal decision I made.”

Similarly, Lexi Thompson, 30, had already been in the public eye for nearly two decades when, in May 2024, she announced her decision to leave a full -time schedule. She started playing a tour when she was seven and competed in her US women’s ancestors in 12. For her, it was not just the golf that became a lot, it was all other things: practice, travel, sponsor’s obligations, loneliness, stress. For all high levels, there were many landing. Her decision, years in making, brought relief.

“Time time to be able to go to bed at night and not worry about the next day and how I will perform and how I will feel – or how people will see me – because of it,” Thompson told golf last summer. “Just giving my mind that I feel mental and feel good with myself; not having to perform and be this perfect person – that’s what I am probably looking forward to.”

At 10 morning Friday at the end of February, Lorena Ochoa looked back on a busy morning. From a table to her home office about 90 minutes outside the city of Mexico, she was caught by a guard by the meaning that her three children were out of school for the day.

“I thought it would be a quiet morning,” she joked.

Before this latest group of LPGA pensioners made titles, Ochoa was the most famous LPGA division. She was the highest rank player in the world when she suddenly announced her retirement, at the age of 28, in 2010.

In just six years in the LPGA Tour, Ochoa won 27 times, including two major. At its beginning of 183 LPGA, it ended first, the second or third one 34 percent tremendous time. At the time she retired, she was a lock for the hall of fame. But still, why rest?

“I was about to move on,” she said. “I was willing to do all the other activities. I know I was young, only 28 years old. I was physically strong, it was probably my best time. But you start getting these feelings mixed in your head, when you don’t get that spark or get that excitement and motivation. And then your advantages start to change.”

Fifteen years later, Ochoa has no regrets. She is deeply involved in her Lorena Ochoa Foundation, which, among other things, finances a school of 360 children deprived of Guadalajara. She is active with her sponsors and has learned to enjoy “playing bad golf”. She builds golf courses and enjoys bike, jogging and walking. The same energy, car and commitment she put into golf now goes to these new passions. Her three children also keep her busy: they play golf, football and tennis.

“I’m glad to say I made the right decision, and sometimes you have to get a dance of trust,” Ochoa says. “You don’t know what will happen, but you will be surprised because there are so many great and beautiful things outside the golf. I think I’m proof of this because I’m happy with myself. And I feel peace.”

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