Lexi Thompson last month after her final hole at the CME Group Tour Championship.
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The past 12 months had it all — crazy winning streaks, new major champs, a major-week arrest (!) and more. With 2025 on the horizon, our writers are looking back at the most memorable moments from 2024.
Lexi Thompson, amidst questions about her soon retirement from full-time golf, her future and the overall state of the game, lit up last month at the CME Group Tour Championship.
My 16-year-old nephew is trying to break 80 for the first time and shoots in the mid-80s right now. What’s one quick tip you would give him?
“That I would give him to break 80?” Thompson asked. “How long has he been playing?”
Been playing about four years.
“Oh, that’s pretty good then,” she said. “He’s going in the right direction. I always say the biggest tip that helped out the most when I went out and practiced was always have a goal in mind. Always have something you want to improve on. It could be the smallest or biggest of things, the mental side. As we know, golf is such a mental sport. Could be working on the mental side and visualizing shots.
“So going out there with a purpose. Don’t just go out to the golf course and be like I’m just going to hit some balls today or play. Have a goal, something you want to improve on. That way, you’re not wasting any time and it’s always productive practice.
“Even if you struggle a little bit, you had a goal, you committed, and you’re striving to be better.”
A good tip, and a good way to start an article attempting to assess Thompson’s career after she surprisingly announced at the end of May that 2024 would be her last full-time year as a professional, as Thompson will especially be remembered as being charitable with her time for her younger followers, and that generosity will sit high among her successes. But, like anyone, there’ve been notable setbacks, too, so we’ll approach things with just these two simple questions:
Was Lexi Thompson’s career successful?
Was Lexi Thompson’s career unsuccessful?
Let’s start with the former.
Was Lexi Thompson’s career successful?
By every measure, yes.
Wins? Thompson won, 11 times in all since joining the LPGA in 2012, including one major (the 2014 Kraft Nabisco). The 29-year-old also posted 91 top-10s and 158 top-25s, and she collected $14.7 million in prize money.
What about fame? Thompson is famous, present tense. Six times she was a Solheim Cup team member. Once, she played against the men, at last year’s Shriners Children’s Open, where she missed the cut by three. She’s a spokeswoman for countless products, and she’s championed mental health awareness. Shoot, she’s mononymous — you likely call her by only her first name, an honor reserved for the Jacks, Tigers and Annikas of the world.
What about respect? A hard question — you may feel that way toward someone, but your neighbor may not. It depends a lot on what you value. But count the biggest name in women’s golf among her biggest admirers.
On the day of Thompson’s announcement, Nelly Korda said this:
“I honestly heard probably 15 minutes ago that she’s retiring. She’s had such an amazing career, I think. I’ve gotten to be on the team with her a couple times representing our country.
“I think she does an amazing job for the tour. She spends so much time going to each pro-am party. She really dedicated her time to growing the game. It’s sad to see that she’s obviously leaving and not going to be out here with us anymore, but she’s had an amazing career, and I wish her the best in this new chapter of her life.”
Was Lexi Thompson’s career unsuccessful?
Of course, be good at something once, and the question is: When will you be good at something again? Success creates expectations, and with Thompson, there was a near-constant thought — fairly or unfairly — that she should have been better. She’d famously played at the U.S. Women’s Open as a 12-year-old, and for the next 17 years, folks wondered what the major tally would be. Five wins? Ten? Why not?
But she finished with one, along with a host of near-misses, most famously at the 2017 Kraft Nabisco. There, she lost in a playoff, though that had come after being penalized four shots with six holes to play in regulation because of a rules violation the day before — and it had been spotted by a fan at home. Even Tiger Woods tweeted in her support: “Viewers at home should not be officials wearing stripes,” Woods wrote. “Let’s go Lexi, win this thing anyway.”
As a result of her shortcomings and remarks that followed, Thompson said she at times felt burdened — but proud that she was able to persevere
“Being out here can be a lot,” Thompson said through tears at a press conference following her announcement. “It can be lonely. Sorry if I get emotional; I said I wasn’t going to. I just think, especially with what’s happened in golf, as of recent too, a lot of people don’t — they don’t realize a lot of what we go through as a professional athlete.
“I’ll be the last one to say throw me a pity party. That’s the last thing I want. We’re doing what we love. We’re trying the best every single day. You know, we’re not perfect. We’re humans. Words hurt. It’s hard to overcome sometimes. But having the people around you that love you and support you, I feel like that’s been the biggest thing for me. I might not have a huge friend group, but to have the people that matter the most around me have gotten me through some really hard times.
“I think it’s a lot for everyone out here or in any professional sport. A lot of people don’t know what we go through. The amount of training and hard work that we put ourselves through, it’s a lot. I don’t think we deserve — I think we deserve a lot more credit than what we get.”
So what does Lexi Thompson think?
It’s here where we’ll note that Thompson isn’t fully retired — you’ll see her at a handful of events next year and beyond, so, should she find success again, Thompson could very well be a part of another ‘story of the year’ compilation.
But she’s OK if she isn’t, too.
She’s OK with retirement. She’s OK with her legacy.
“I’ve always just wanted to be able to give back to the game, to leave it in a better place,” she told GOLF’s Jessica Marksbury earlier this year. “And that’s hopefully what people look to me as — not only a golfer but a great person that has given back, good or bad day.”
Nick Piastowski is a Senior Editor at Golf.com and Golf Magazine. In his role, he is responsible for editing, writing and developing stories across the golf space. And when he’s not writing about ways to hit the golf ball farther and straighter, the Milwaukee native is probably playing the game, hitting the ball left, right and short, and drinking a cold beer to wash away his score. You can reach out to him about any of these topics — his stories, his game or his beers — at nick.piastowski@golf.com.
