PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. — The game of golf doesn’t really let you retire. It’s always tempting for more. For you and me, sure, but especially the pros.
Think about the Champions Tour, or the senior majors, or the press conference Jack Nicklaus gave earlier this week in Ohio. If you’ve been great at golf, it will beg you to come back. And it will make a big deal of that comeback, too. The fact that St. Andrews hosts the Open once every five years is tradition but also doesn’t feel like an accident. Everyone deserves their final walk over the bridge, if you played in 2022, why couldn’t you play in 2027? Tiger Woods will test the theory.
Golf has this way of keeping a hand on the necks of its heroes for as long as possible — and much longer than other sports. Some of that is lovely, like Fred Couples’ annual walk around Augusta National. But very few golf legends comfortably waltz into retirement and stay there, content. Look at Lexi Thompson, who has mangled the idea of that R-word by sticking a “semi” in front of it. She wishes she was here this week, at Riviera Country Club, playing a 20th U.S. Women’s Open. But if it was so important, as she suggested on Instagram, then why did she bail on Final Qualifying? The path forward seems so wide during anyone’s prime, but it narrows quickly toward the end. Dealing with that can be a struggle on both sides: theirs and ours.
This week’s idea of retirement surrounds Michelle Wie West, who is now, officially, done done. Friday was her final day in true competition, a four-over 75 for a 36-hole tally of seven over. She missed the cut by a few, but she wasn’t expected to make it. Her long game was warm enough to flirt with the weekend, but the putter was cold. When it came to an end, she signed her autographs, did her interviews, chatted with friends and hung out, unhurried.
The reason why?
She had fun. She felt the feels again. That mystical tenseness pro golfers seem to crave.
“It’s fun to just hit shots under pressure,” she said after it was over. “You don’t feel pressure — I don’t feel pressure in my normal life. There’s really nothing I do that recreates this, so it was fun to feel it again.”
Wie West talked about retirement years ago, and make it as real as can be at Pebble Beach in 2023. She’s competed just once since — at last month’s Mizuho Americas Open, which she hosts in Jersey — but failed to break 80. In the years since Pebble, she’s grown into a level of purposeful peace with the sport that dominated — and at times roiled — her life. She didn’t play at Lancaster in 2024, and not at Erin Hills in 2025. She wasn’t interested; didn’t need to be. But that 2014 U.S. Open victory at Pinehurst gave her a decade of exemptions, and she stretched it as along as she could via a couple years of maternity leave, landing on Riv as her final U.S. Open romp. Her father-in-law, the NBA hall-of-famer Jerry West, was a member here and raised his kids down the street. It was here or nowhere, and the family tried to make the most of it.
Her parents, B.J. and Bo, were on hand. So was the family nanny, and two of their three dogs. As the second round came to a close, Wie West’s 6-year-old daughter Makenna was coaxed onto the final green for a hug that mom has been looking forward to. Makenna was there for an instant and immediately asked if she could leave all the cameras and fans to go see a friend. Mom shrugged. So it goes.
“The reason why she wanted to go up to daycare was because she wanted to go play with Brittany Lang’s kid,” Michelle said. “That’s also just so crazy to know that I’ve known Brittany Lang since I was 13, and now our kids are playing together and are best friends. It’s awesome. It’s fun to see the time go by, and I feel blessed.”
It’s fun to see the time go by. How few people can say that? Almost everyone says the exact opposite! One might think LPGA pros would struggle with it the most, with many of their careers shortened (or impacted) by motherhood. There was a pregnant woman in the field this week, playing because she loves playing. She doesn’t want pregnancy to completely alter her life.
Wie West, though, could not seem more content with golf. And she grinded for this tournament, let’s be clear. She cursed at herself a few times, but mostly striped it. She was unquestionably a solid addition to the field, beating nearly half of it. Anyone with an ounce of competitiveness would be riding a see-saw of emotion after that. But there were no tears; all smiles.
The pro golf ecosystem is littered with opportunities that keep everyone fully moving on. Sponsor’s exemptions, broadcasting roles and podcast hosts asking you to relive the past over and over and over and over. Wie West will give in here and there. She’ll swing the new McLaren clubs. She’ll play in the Women’s TGL in the winter. Her game won’t be perfect. It may not be super tight. But Makenna will love it, in the same ways Billy Horschel’s kids love when their dad plays TGL.
In May, she’ll host some of the best juniors in the world alongside some of the best pros in the world — an event she created that allows her to stay right in the thick of it all for a few weeks a year, golf clubs left at home in the garage.
But before all that, though, she’ll hang around LA for at least a few more days, watching the best women’s amateurs in the game at the Curtis Cup and dreaming about the chance to be their captain someday.
