Former World No. 1 Announces Retirement from LPGA

Stacy Lewis, 40, overcame scoliosis as a teen to become one of the LPGA’s most impactful stars on and off the course.

Former world No. 1 Stacy Lewis will retire from the LPGA after the 2025 season. / Aaron Doster-Imagn Images

Stacy Lewis has reached the end of the road. 

The 40-year-old Texan announced Wednesday that is retiring from the LPGA after 17 years. She’s competing this week in the Walmart NW Arkansas Championship. 

“Never in a million years would I have thought this journey playing golf would still be going in 2025,” the former world No. 1 wrote, “but the time has come to put the clubs away. I will finish out the 2025 season, but this will be my last on the LPGA.”

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Lewis, a former Arkansas Razorback and two-time major champion, overcame odds to become one of women’s golf's biggest stars. At age 11, she was diagnosed with scoliosis and wore a brace until she was 18. 

A few months before her first year of college, she underwent surgery, inserting a metal rod and five screws into her spine while also deflating a lung and moving organs around. Learning how to walk and balance again in rehab, she redshirted her freshman year before becoming a four-time All-American.

She turned professional in 2008 and earned her maiden LPGA title at the 2011 Kraft Nabisco Championship, a major, holding off world No. 1 Yani Tseng by three strokes. She added another major victory to her resume at the 2013 Women’s British Open at St. Andrews. 

Thank you ❤️ pic.twitter.com/vM2GrsufDT

— Stacy Lewis (@Stacy_Lewis) September 17, 2025

Lewis is a two-time LPGA Player of the Year recipient, claiming the honor in 2012 and 2014, and captained the U.S. Solheim Cup team in 2023 and 2024. 

Of her 13 LPGA Tour wins, her last came at the 2020 Scottish Open, ending a three-year winless drought. 

As well as her success on the course, Lewis made quite an impact off it, too. Extremely charitable, she donated golf equipment to Joplin (Missouri) High School after the 2011 deadly tornado and donated her earnings from the 2017 Portland Classic win to Hurricane Harvey relief efforts. 

In turn, she garnered big sponsorship deals, such as KPMG and Tyson Foods. 

“I don’t know how many sponsors we have because she wouldn’t take no for an answer,” 2027 U.S. Solheim Cup captain Angela Stanford told Golfweek. 

And Lewis wore her heart on her sleeve, always open and honest. One of the most notable examples came in 2017, when she demanded changes to France’s Evian Championship, a major, pledging, “It’s not treated like a major, and yet we are calling it that.” She only played it once (2019) since. 

Now, Lewis looks forward to more time with her 7-year-old daughter. But her footprint in golf won’t evaporate entirely. 

“I want to continue to impact the game,” Lewis told Golfweek. “I don’t know what that capacity looks like, whether it’s with the LPGA or if it’s with somebody else in golf ... I just want to help make things better.”

She plans to tee it up next year, though, as a past champion of the Chevron Championship in the Woodlands, Texas, her hometown.