FILE PHOTO: Sep 15, 2024; Gainesville, Virginia, USA; Stacy Lewis of Team USA holds the trophy as she celebrates defeating Team Europe at Robert Trent Jones Golf Club. Mandatory Credit: Aaron Doster-Imagn Images/ File Photo
(Reuters) -Stacy Lewis, the former world number one who captained the U.S. to victory at the 2024 Solheim Cup, will retire from the Ladies Professional Golf Association at the end of the 2025 season.
The 40-year-old Lewis, who counts two majors among her 13 wins on tour and twice earned Player of the Year honors, said in a social media post ahead of this week's LPGA event in Arkansas that her body "has told me it's time."
"Never in a million years, would I have thought this journey playing golf would still be going in 2025, but the time has come to put the clubs away," Lewis said in the post. "I will finish out the 2025 season, but this will be my last on the LPGA."
Lewis was diagnosed with scoliosis as an 11-year-old and for the next seven years wore a back brace 18 hours a day. Surgery in 2003 forced Lewis to miss her first collegiate golf season but she went on to become one of the best players of her era.
She won majors at the 2011 Chevron Championship and the 2013 women's British Open, spent 25 weeks atop the world rankings, was named Player of the Year in 2012 and 2014 and finished in a share of fourth place at the 2016 Rio Olympics.
Lewis represented her country on the 2011, 2013, 2015 and 2017 Solheim Cup teams and served as captain in the last two editions of the biennial competition that pits the best female golfers from the U.S. against those from Europe.
(Reporting by Frank Pingue in Toronto; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)
