Why this top-20 player’s best season hasn’t derailed her retirement plans

This week’s CME Group Tour Championship will not only be the last tournament of the season for LPGA Tour player Ally Ewing, it will also be the last of her career.

Like Lexi Thompson and Brittany Lincicome, who also announced retirement plans this year, on Sunday at Tiburon in Naples, Fla., 32-year-old Ewing is ready to call it a career.

Ewing has three career LPGA Tour wins and is currently No. 18 in the Rolex Ranking. Despite posting the highest earnings total of her career, with $1.9 million thus far this season — and six top-10 finishes (another career high) — Ewing said her recent play has only reinforced her decision to step away from pro golf.

“If anything, it gave me more and more peace,” Ewing said on Tuesday. “The better I played, and really, too, like Solheim was high up on that list, being on this team. Then I knew that was my last Solheim. Being able to finally win one, that was really special, too. So I never looked at my family or my husband at any point in the year and said, I don’t know. They kind of would poke at me a little bit. Yeah, I knew and I’ve had peace all through the year. That’s even more solidified my decision.”

Ewing has been playing on the LPGA Tour since 2016 and says in addition to hoping to start a family with her husband, she’s ready to embrace the normalcy of life at home.

“I think I am excited just for the next chapter,” she said. “You know, I can’t really tell you specifics of what that looks like, but I’m just looking forward to the small things. You know, I do love being home. I joke that my husband, he might get sick of me being home so much he might tell me to go do something else.

“Yeah, just the small things,” she continued. “There are just things that I miss, like I miss my bed. Just the little things like that. Making my own coffee at home. There are tons of things I’ll miss about this Tour. I’ll miss the people. I’ve always been a homebody though so the travel gets pretty tough on me.”

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Ewing said health considerations also factored into her decision.

“As a Type I diabetic the routine of being at home will make management a little bit easier for me,” she said. “And then there is the part if we’re blessed to have kids down the road, starting a family, that’s something we’re definitely looking forward to.

“I had a pretty good idea two years ago that I was going to have two to three more years in me,” she said. “Down the road if we are blessed with kids, that will be a high-risk pregnancy for me; I’m 32 now. I’m not the youngest player on Tour anymore either. So you just put a lot of things into the equation and this was just the right timing for me.”

When Ewing plays her final hole on Sunday, she said she’ll try to remain focused on the task at hand.

“I’ll try to avoid eye contact with the family until after I finish hole 18 for sure,” she said.

Ultimately, though, Ewing is grateful to end her career on a high note, regardless of how this week plays out.

“When I looked at my career I wanted to play good golf as I finished my career,” she said. “I didn’t want to just fizzle out. Fortunately, knowing this year was my last year I’ve played some of my best golf. So I think that’s just how I drew it up. I know that doesn’t make a lot of sense to people, to stop playing when you’re playing good golf, but that’s just how I wanted to do it.”