MENLO PARK, Calif. – Lydia Ko doesn’t love golf.
The subject came up recently with her mental coach. There’s no bucket list of courses she’d like to play.
She doesn’t really enjoy playing under pressure either. Some people crave the adrenaline rush that comes with competition, but that’s not her.
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What drives the LPGA Hall of Famer? She loves to excel – no matter the task.
“I don’t want to half-ass washing my dishes,” she said recently over breakfast at the Fortinet Founders Cup. “I don’t like when my husband still leaves a little bit of grease on the plate when it goes in the dishwasher.”
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Lydia Ko of New Zealand has drink poured on her by fellow players in celebration of victory on the 18th green during Day Four of the HSBC Women’s World Championship 2025 at Sentosa Golf Club on March 02, 2025 in Singapore.
Ko’s days on the LPGA are numbered. She doesn’t know the finish line exactly, but it’s not likely to extend past the 2027 season. When she does retire, it won’t be a mic drop moment, though she has visualized something like Suzann Pettersen’s walk-off at the 2019 Solheim Cup.
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It’s important to Ko that she gives a proper goodbye. She wants to say thank you. She wants to give fans, especially those who have crossed the globe to watch her grow up on tour, a chance to watch her compete one last time. It’s the right thing to do, she said.
When the time comes, she’ll give everyone a two-month heads-up, not six months or a year.
“I personally don’t want a parade of retirement,” she said.
Ko turns 29 on April 24 and has given the subject of retirement a lot of thought. In fact, she brought it up two days after collecting her first paycheck as a pro in late 2013, telling Golfweek she’d be done by age 30.
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“I’ve played golf for 11 years,” 16-year-old Ko said back then during a photo shoot at ChampionsGate near Orlando, Florida. “Twenty-five years, I think, is enough.”
Lydia Ko of New Zealand poses with her trophy and two members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police following her five stroke victory during the final round of the CN Canadian Women’s Open at Royal Mayfair Golf Club on August 25, 2013 in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
A young Ko had already watched how Annika Sorenstam and Lorena Ochoa went out on top, and she wanted that too.
Golf has given her so much. She met her first boyfriend, now husband, Jun Chung, through the game and countless friends. She rewrote the LPGA record books, collected Olympic medals and major championship trophies and, before she retires, will pass Sorenstam on the all-time career money list.
She was made a Dame by New Zealand, though as one of Ko’s sponsorship partners recently put it, she’s a global citizen, beloved the world over.
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Too much has gone right to leave at the wrong time.
“I think I’ve always wanted that mindset of, maybe if I played more, I might have won more,” she said, “than be like, oh, my God, I should have left a year ago. Like, I hate the game so much.”
Because Ko strives for excellence in all things, it comes as a surprise that she’s put so much thought into preparing for the next chapter, while at the same time, putting in all the work to stay at peak form.
Last September in South Korea, Ko’s swing coach Holton Freeman had dinner with her after she’d made an appearance on the KLPGA.
“What will you do tomorrow?” Freeman asked Ko about her plans after she got home. “Are you just gonna have a Netflix day?”
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Ko, who seemed a bit surprised by the question, told him that she had Pilates at 8:30 a.m., followed by a putting lesson and then a club fitting in the afternoon. Freeman asked if she ever just took the day off and had a pajama day at home.
“No,” said Ko, “I’ll just rest on the plane.”
Her work ethic is part of her lore.
Lydia Ko of New Zealand and her husband Jun Chung with the AIG Women’s Open Championship trophy on the Swilcan Bridge during day four of the 2024 AIG Women’s Open Championship at The Old Course, on August 25, 2024, in St. Andrews, Scotland.
By age 16, Ko had already won twice on the LPGA as an amateur, a feat that will likely never be repeated. She seems to have instinctively known even back then, that the way she’d dedicate her life to the sport through her teens and 20s would be enough. Having that finish line in mind before she’d ever really started might have helped her sacrifice so much for so long.
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The LPGA’s first full-field event of the season takes place this week with the 15th edition of the Founders Cup, an event that pays tribute to the 13 women who started the tour in 1950 and the generations of pioneers who followed.
Ko has served on the LPGA board and cares deeply about the health of the game after she’s gone. When LPGA commissioner Craig Kessler came on board last year, they got together for coffee and talked for three hours. Ko is more likely to pick up the phone quietly behind the scenes than make a stir publicly, but she’s prone to thinking big picture.
“I think sometimes we get carried away about what we play for, but there might be nothing to play for if our organization is not fundamentally strong,” said Ko when asked about the tour’s pain points.
“I would love the winning purse to be like CME every week,” she continued, “but sometimes I think we’ve got to match, like, what do we bring to the community? It’s a lot more complex than just the purse. Like if nobody’s coming out to watch us play at a certain event, it’d be weird if we had a $1.5 million [winner’s prize] … so what can we bring to the community, what can we bring to our partners? All of these things have to align. It doesn’t make sense if one outweighs the other drastically.”
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With age comes depth, and in recent years, Ko has been more willing to share what others might keep tucked away.
Her reach, growing up in this modern age, is immeasurable. Everyone, it seems, has a Ko story.
Lydia Ko of New Zealand plays her shot from the 11th tee during the first round of the Fortinet Founders Cup 2026 at Sharon Heights Golf and Country Club on March 19, 2026 in Menlo Park, California.
Major winner Grace Kim, 25, remembers the day Ko started following her on Instagram after she’d won a tournament back home in Australia.
“I was like, oh, this legend started following me, I must be good,” Kim said with a laugh.
Lindy Duncan became close friends with Ko back home in Orlando while practicing together at Lake Nona Golf and Country Club. Duncan, a Duke grad who has never won on tour but is playing the best golf of her life at age 35, knows better than most the hole that will be left when Ko walks away.
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“I don’t want it to ever end,” said Duncan. “She’s totally irreplaceable.”
Ko’s husband is a bona fide golf addict, who took up the game during COVID and had to Google his wife when he met her. They played eight rounds of golf together on their honeymoon. Golf will be part of their family life, and Ko looks forward to that time with future kids.
It makes leaving the game with a full heart even more important.
“I’ve been able to excel at the highest level in my industry, which not everybody gets to do that, 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.”
The long goodbye has already begun. Rest assured, there will never be another like her.
This article originally appeared on Golfweek: LPGA star Lydia Ko on when she’ll say goodbye
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