If it seems like 29-year-old Lexi Thompson has been around for decades, it’s because she has.
Then known as Alexis, Thompson was just 12 years old when she became the youngest player ever to tee it up at the U.S. Women’s Open at Southern Pines in North Carolina, and was just a few days past her 19th birthday when she won the 2014 Kraft Nabisco Championship for what remains to date her only major championship victory.
Longevity in the women’s game is not common, so to be playing in her 18th consecutive U.S. Women’s Open is an incredible achievement, but she won’t make it to 19 or 20 as she announced that she will be retiring at the end of the season, bringing an end to one of the most colourful careers in modern women’s golf history.
Despite winning just one major title, Thompson’s Wikipedia major championship section is awash with yellow, accruing 19 top-10 finishes alongside her 2014 victory, missing just 12 major championship cuts since turning professional at the tender age of 15 back in 2010.
Best known for her aggressive style of play and power game, Thompson competed against the stars of the PGA Tour when she received a special exemption to tee it up in the Shriners Children’s Open in 2023, impressing with rounds of 73 and 69 to narrowly miss the cut by two strokes. Had she been two shots better, she would have become the first female ever to make a cut on the PGA Tour.
A veteran of six Solheim Cups, she could yet be in line for a seventh and final appearance at Robert Trent Jones Golf Club in Virginia this September, but in the meantime, she’s got eyes on that elusive U.S. Women’s Open title having finished runner-up in 2019 and then third in 2021.
And it would be a fitting way to sign off should she finally get her hands on women’s golf’s most prestigious trophy at Pennsylvania’s Lancaster Country Club this week.
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