THE WOODLANDS, TEXAS | LPGA star So Yeon Ryu began her first round of the Chevron Championship on Thursday in almost the exact same way she had begun hundreds of professional rounds in her long career stretching from her native Seoul, South Korea, to southeast Texas.
Dressed in a light blue shirt, dark blue skirt and blue Titleist hat, she checked her golf ball number with fellow competitors, heard a brief introduction of her remarkable career, which included winning this tournament in 2017, offered a brief wave to the crowd and blistered her tee shot down the middle of the fairway.
This only difference was that Ryu was days, if not hours, from never repeating the sequence again. She announced before this first LPGA major of the year that she would be retiring from professional golf at age 33 and returning to her homeland for a host of non-golf opportunities and challenges.
“What am I looking forward to the most in retirement?” she said, repeating a question she was asked before her first round at the Carlton Woods course.
“Doing nothing, absolutely nothing,” she said. “Not setting an alarm clock in the morning and doing nothing.”
In reality, she has much more planned than “nothing” in her retirement. There is broadcasting on Korean TV, architecture, church work, music and golf promotion. But after a cloudy start to her final professional tournament with an opening 77, doing nothing and following the example of other retired female golf greats sounded pretty good.
“If I had to pick one word to describe my career it would be grateful,” Ryu said before her first round. “I had to come back to say thank you to all my [LPGA] family.”
Add a 2011 U.S. Women’s Open victory at The Broadmoor in Colorado Springs among her six LPGA victories, 10 triumphs on the Korean LPGA, one in Japan and one on the Ladies European Tour and it’s been a full and hugely successful career.
Ryu hadn’t played on the LPGA Tour since last fall at the BMW Ladies Championship, but she said that returning for the first LPGA major event of the year was fitting. Her victory at the 2017 ANA Inspiration – forerunner to today’s Chevron and the corporate descendant of the former Dinah Shore event played for a half-century at Mission Hills Country Club in Rancho Mirage, California – was her second and final major title.
She defeated Lexi Thompson on the first hole of a playoff, and later won again that year in Arkansas, which propelled her to No. 1 in the Rolex Women’s World Golf Rankings, the third Korean to achieve that lofty spot.
“First, I wanted to come back to this tournament to bring out all the good memories, and the second is the tradition we have here, so many legendary players,” she said. “Without them, I would not have had what I have for the last 12 years on the LPGA, so I wanted to thank them in person.”
Ryu said she plans on learning from Mexico’s Lorena Ochoa, another international superstar who retired in 2010 at age 28 with two major titles and the No. 1 ranking but has stayed close to golf.
“When Lorena retired, I noticed she spent a lot of time promoting Mexican golf, and that is something I want to do very much with golf in Korea and the courses we have there,” Ryu said. “Of course, when Lorena retired, she was at the very top and I am not there any longer, but I still want to promote.”
In addition to being an ambassador for the game when she returns to Korea, Ryu said she is interested in architecture, an industry still dominated by men on both sides of the Pacific Ocean.
“To have the chance to design a golf course would be really amazing,” she said.
She credits Australian architect Michael Clayton, a former tour pro, for sparking an interest in designing courses rather than dominating them as a competitor.
“To be honest, when I first came on tour, I didn’t really understand about golf course architecture,” she said. “It’s really embarrassing to say, but I didn’t really appreciate when we played St. Andrews [Old Course], which is stupid. Now I look back, and it’s an amazing golf course.”
Ryu said the seeds of her retirement journey were planted with the outbreak of the global pandemic in 2019. With no professional golf being played in America or anywhere else, she returned to her family in Korea and found that after more than a decade of travel, being at home was a welcomed change.
“I realized it felt like a real life I never knew,” Ryu said. “I never knew I could have that kind of a stable life. So, in 2020, I realized I really wanted a stable life.”
After play resumed in late 2020, several top-10 finishes would follow in the next few years, but she has not won on the LPGA in six years, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that home was the place where she really wanted to be.
Thailand’s Atthaya Thitikul saluted Ryu as “one of my favorite golfers out here because everybody loves her.”
“Her personality. She is always smiling,” Thitikul said. “Then you see what she has done for women’s golf, and it’s more than anything.”
The final act of a remarkable career came late Friday afternoon with a missed 36-hole cut under the warm Texas sunshine as Ryu putted out for par on the 18th hole and a 2-over 74 at the Carlton Woods course. There were waves to the large crowd surrounding the green and hugs for her playing competitors, fellow Korean Jin Young Ko and Thailand’s Patty Tavatanakit. Other players lined the 18th green to cheer for her while tournament officials provided a bouquet of flowers.
But when it was finally over and she signed her scorecard for the last time, Ryu was headed home to a new and exciting future, right where she has wanted to be for a long time.
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PHOTOS: Courtesy Chevron Championship