“Thank you to the LPGA and many many others!”
Ally Ewing is ready for the next chapter. The 31-year-old American, a three-time winner on the LPGA, made her retirement announcement on Instagram Wednesday morning ahead of the Walmart NW Arkansas Championship.
She’s currently ranked 18th in the world.
“It is with a heavy but grateful heart, that I want to announce that I’ll be retiring from professional golf at the end of this year,” Ewing said in a poignant video. “When I envisioned my career, I never dreamed this small-town Mississippi girl could have had the career that God has blessed me with.”
Ewing was born in Fulton, Mississippi, a don’t-blink town of about 4,500 that, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, is about 8.7 square miles. She honed her golf skills at Fulton Country Club, a hilly nine-hole course that tips out at 5,700 yards after two loops.
Photos: Ally Ewing through the years
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There’s no range at Fulton, so Ewing and childhood friend Chad Ramey, now a PGA Tour player, designed their own makeshift range across fairways. They aimed at trees and shagged their own balls, trying to stay out of the way of paying customers.
A self-described tomboy, Ewing begged her mom Angie to play on the middle school football team as quarterback, but mom said they were drawing the line.
While the highly-competitive Ewing shined as a point guard on the girls’ team at Itawamba Agricultural High School, she made her name playing golf with the boys. Ewing, formerly McDonald, became the first girl to win the Mississippi boys state high school championship. The coolest thing about winning, she once said, was that she did it from 7,000 yards, the longest course she’d ever played.
In college, Ewing put Mississippi State on the map, winning five times before joining the now Epson Tour in 2016, where she earned her full LPGA card for the following season.
Ewing won her first LPGA title on her 28th birthday in 2020, several months after she married Charlie Ewing, head women’s golf coach at her alma mater.
Now in her eighth full season on the LPGA, Ewing has $6 million in career earnings and 25 career top-10 finishes. This season alone she’s made $1.8 million on the strength of three top-10 finishes at the majors. She’s ranked ninth of the CME points list, which means she’ll wrap up her career in November at the CME Group Tour Championship, which boasts a $4 million winner’s prize.
“I’ve seen so much of the world and met so many incredible people,” Ewing said in her video, “but I’ve also never felt more alone at times and have missed out on things that were so close to my heart.
“I’ve cried many tears, but I will never take for granted what this game has done for me. I have fulfilled a dream that many strive for.”
Ewing said the highest honor of her career was representing the U.S. at the Solheim Cup, which she did on four separate occasions, finally getting a taste of victory earlier this month in Virginia.
Several of Ewing’s Solheim Cup teammates commented on her Instagram post, including Lexi Thompson, who announced earlier in the year her decision to retire from full-time competition at the end of this season. Jennifer Kupcho noted that the tour will miss Ewing’s “bright light.”
“While I’ve always felt I was able to balance golf and life,” said Ewing, “every decision I’ve made since I was young has always been deliberated with how it would impact golf.”
That changes soon.
