Dame Lydia Ko signals likely retirement from LPGA Tour after 2027 season

Lydia Ko poses with her gold medal after winning the 2024 Paris Olympics Women’s Golf competition at Le Golf National in Paris, France. Photo / Photosport

Dame Lydia Ko has given the biggest hint yet when she plans to retire from professional golf.

In an interview with Golf Week before the Founders Cup this week, Ko said her career’s not likely to extend past the 2027 LPGA season.

After winning gold at the Paris Olympics to become the first golfer to complete the Olympic set of medals, Ko said she would not return for the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.

Golf Week reports Ko plans to give a two-month heads-up instead of making people aware before her final season.

“I personally don’t want a parade of retirement,” she said.

“I’ve been able to excel at the highest level in my industry, which not everybody gets to do, and I did it for quite a long time and for different phases,” said Ko. “I would hate to be at a point where I’m like, I don’t even want to see my golf clubs anymore.”

Still only 28 years old but a veteran on the LPGA Tour in her 13th season, Ko last month admitted that golf is starting to take a toll.

“To be honest, now that I’ve been on tour for so long, my body, I know, is not the same as 10 years ago. So my recovery is not as fast as I think it should be. Sometimes I think the fatigue catches up to me more than where I am mentally. So, I’m just trying to have a good balance of that,” Ko told media.

For a player who has ticked almost all the boxes in a Hall of Fame career, a few trophies elude her. Ko needs a victory at either the women’s US Open or women’s PGA Championship to claim the career grand slam, a feat the PGA Tour’s Rory McIlroy completed at the Masters last year.

This year’s women’s US Open takes place at California’s Riviera Country Club in the first week of June, which will also host the Olympics.

“There might be the question in your head like, okay, what’s next? And I’ve had that question in my career at multiple points, and even after winning the silver medal in Rio, that was such a big goal of mine. After that was done, I had lost a little bit of sense of direction in my career,” Ko said last month.

“I think the US Women’s Open has always been a big star or key on the schedule in any season. I obviously haven’t won that. So that’s always a motivation.”

Ko opened with a one-under 71 in the first round of the Founders Cup to sit in a share of 42nd.

Ko has 23 career wins on the LPGA Tour since her maiden win at the 2012 Canadian Open as a 15-year-old amateur. Along with three major titles, two more than any other New Zealander, she has amassed 118 top tens on the LPGA Tour and US$21.5 million ($36.8m) in career earnings.