announced two years ago<\/a> that she was stepping away from the full-time grind of professional golf, has failed to qualify after withdrawing from a recent qualifier in Naples, Florida.<\/p>\n\u201cIt\u2019s hard to believe that in 2007, as a 12-year-old girl with big dreams, I qualified for my first US Women\u2019s Open,\u201d Thompson wrote in an emotional Instagram post.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the time, I was just excited to be there. I remember practicing my autograph in the backseat of my parents car on the drive up to @pineneedlesresort!<\/p>\n
\u201cI never could have imagined that week would be the beginning of a career that would take me around the world, allow me to compete against the best players in the game, and help me live out my dream of playing professional golf.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor the first time since that week, I won\u2019t be competing in the US Women\u2019s Open. Definitely not a great feeling, I\u2019d be lying if I said otherwise. But I have to remind myself that I\u2019ve played in 19 in a row at the age of 30, and I\u2019m very proud of that.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s also made me reflect on how much this championship has meant to me. Some of my most special memories, biggest challenges, and greatest lessons have come from this event. It helped shape me not only as a golfer, but as a person.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m incredibly grateful for every year I had the opportunity to be part of it, and for all of the fans, family, friends, volunteers, and supporters who have been with me along the way.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven though I\u2019m still playing limited schedule, I realize there are different dreams to focus on in my life, and I\u2019m excited for those phases in my life.<\/p>\n
\u201cThank you, US Women\u2019s Open, for being where the dream began and who knows maybe I\u2019ll be at another one in the future. Good luck to all the ladies this week.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Thompson announced her \u2018retirement\u2019 in 2024, many assumed that her time among the game\u2019s elite had been over, but her appearances have been more than sporadic since then. She played in three majors last season and finished in a tie for 12th at this year\u2019s Chevron Championship. <\/p>\n
But having slipped outside the top 75 in the Rolex Rankings, qualification is no longer a sure thing for one of the game\u2019s superstars. <\/p>\n
The 11-time LPGA Tour winner has not made a cut at the US Women\u2019s Open since 2022 back at Pine Needles. Perhaps we really have now seen Thompson on the biggest stage for the final time. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The US Women\u2019s Open will have a different feel this week as Lexi Thomson\u2019s extraordinary record comes to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":616208,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[5904,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-616207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=616207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616207\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/616208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=616207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=616207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=616207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}