After seven seasons, 129 starts, nine top-10s and one win, Elizabeth Szokol has played her final LPGA event.<\/p>\n
The 30-year-old Szokol announced her retirement Friday at Pelican Golf Club, where she bogeyed her final hole to miss The Annika cut by a single shot.<\/p>\n
Szokol had finalized her decision to hang it up back in July, targeting her hometown event at her home club as the perfect place for a sendoff. Playing in Friday afternoon\u2019s final threesome alongside two of her best friends on tour, Caroline Inglis and Brianna Do, Szokol carded five birdies but also six bogeys to shoot her second straight 1-over 71 and walk off the final green at 2 over.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was good until I saw Caroline and Bri crying, to be honest,\u201d Szokol said. \u201cSo, I think it kind of hit me more than I expected. I was pretty calm about it. I think I would say I let most of the emotions out when I made the decision this was going to be my last year in July. But definitely, it was kind of crazy that, OK, this could be my last putt.\u201d<\/p>\n
Inglis and Do each made the cut on the number, significant because the 31-year-old Inglis, Szokol says, is also retiring after this week and Do is trying to keep her card after entering this event at No. 110 in CME points.<\/p>\n
Szokol will finish inside the top 100 on the points list, her fourth time doing so. Not that it matters now.<\/p>\n
After gravitating toward golf as a teenager after knee injuries playing softball and tennis, Szokol played two seasons of college golf at Northwestern, where she led the Wildcats to their first Big Ten title, before finishing her amateur career at Virginia, where her highlights included winning an NCAA regional as a senior. She turned pro in 2017 and earned her LPGA card the next year via the Symetra Tour. After her rookie year on the LPGA, Szokol never made fewer than 13 starts in a season.<\/p>\n
Her team victory with Cheyenne Knight at the 2023 Dow Great Lakes Bay Invitational extended her career, as Szokol, now married, had already begun thinking about her next chapter.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve had a lot of lingering injuries, and the travel got a bit old for me and just kind of missed being home,\u201d Szokol said.<\/p>\n
The Tampa area had been Szokol\u2019s home since she turned pro, and she\u2019s worked with Pelican\u2019s director of golf, Justin Sheehan, since 2019. She was unsure of her future plans, saying she has \u201csome stuff in the works\u201d but would start figuring it all out starting Monday.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s hard to believe it\u2019s been nine years playing, which is pretty crazy,\u201d Szokol said. \u201cIt was great to retire at home, a golf course I\u2019m a member at and had so many family and friends out today. So, it was pretty special.<\/p>\n
\u201cWould\u2019ve liked one more putt to go in, but that\u2019s all right. I can look back at a successful career.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After seven seasons, 129 starts, nine top-10s and one win, Elizabeth Szokol has played her final LPGA event.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":293624,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-293623","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-golf","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293623\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/293624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}