Alex Morgan is getting into golf.

The U.S. women’s national team and San Diego Wave star announced Friday that she is joining The Golf League as an investor in the Los Angeles team, alongside retired LPGA great Michelle Wie West, tennis legends Serena and Venus Williams, NBA MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo and more.

“It’s official, my husband and I are married to the game,” she wrote on social media. “I’m thrilled to announce my involvement as an investor with @WeAreLAGC, the inaugural team of @TGL!”

TGL is a new league set to begin play in January 2024, founded by golfers Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy. Some of the top players in the world will compete in three-on-three team competitions using golf simulator technology.

Initially, four teams were announced: Boston, New York, Atlanta and LA. Two more are expected to join the league, which has partnered with the PGA Tour.

“We’re providing a form of the game that looks more like other sports,” Mike McCarley — CEO of Tmrw Sports, the company behind TGL — told Fast Company. “This is going to be an NBA courtside experience, whether you’re there in person or watching on television.”

It’s unknown if or when pros from the LPGA will become involved in the new league. But other investors in the league, including Serena Williams’ husband and fellow TGL investor Alexis Ohanian, are committed to making that happen.

“My first question was, when can we get the LPGA involved? And it’s not just because my daughter is into golf,” Ohanian said. “It would be nice to help elevate the women’s game.”

Ohanian first connected with Morgan when he started tuning into the NWSL, and he later joined Angel City FC as an investor. Now, he’s helped the soccer star become part of TGL.

“Golf has become a family hobby,” Morgan told Fast Company. “So, [investing in LAGC] was a no brainer. It’s something I wanted to be a part of.”

From there, Morgan reached out to Wie West, who was on board almost immediately.

“It’s great to have the same mission: democratizing the dream, breaking down the stigmas of golf, and really showcasing how fun it is,” Wie West said. “We really want to use TGL, to use technology, to help bring this sport to people and communities that would have not otherwise been exposed to it.”

She’s also committed to bringing women golfers into the sport.

“I’ve had many conversations with LPGA Tour Commissioner Mollie [Marcoux Samaan],” she said. “Getting women involved is something that’s very important to me. We’re gonna make it happen. When? I hope soon.”

Michelle Wie West is ready for her curtain call.

The 33-year-old golfer is playing the final tournament of her professional career this week at the U.S. Women’s Open. And while the five-time winner on the LPGA Tour does have her share of “what-ifs,” she is looking beyond them to her future outside the game.

“I feel very — confident that I had the career that I wanted to,” she told the New York Times. “Obviously, I wish I could have done more as well. I think anyone and everyone thinks that.”

But “the what-ifs and the regrets and the ‘I wish I could have done this better’ can drive you truly insane,” she said. And at the end of the day she’s done what she set out to do: earn a degree from Stanford and win a U.S. Open — the 2014 tournament at Pinehurst.

Still, she admitted that it is “hard to know” the right time to walk away. While she always planned to retire after having children, giving birth to her daughter Makenna in 2020 spurred a desire to continue playing. She has done so, playing a few tournaments over the last few years, though she has not played a full LPGA Tour schedule since 2018.

Ultimately, her body has told her that now is the time to step away.

“I really, really wanted to play longer. I really wanted to — especially after having Makenna and her being a girl, I really wanted to play longer,” Wie West told ESPN. “In an ideal world I wish I was still out on tour and playing. Unfortunately it’s just I had to make a hard decision with my body. It is hard. It is hard to be a mom out here. You have to make a lot of sacrifices. I just had to make a hard medical decision and also a personal decision.”

She played a practice round Tuesday with Rose Zhang, a fellow Stanford alum who is just at the start of her career, and Wie West admits that it already has been “an emotional week.”

“I just realized everything I’m doing, I’m doing for the last time,” she said. “The putting drills that I’m doing, you’d best believe I’m not going to do another putting drill for the rest of my life if I don’t need to. So all that stuff I’m doing for the last time, the last practice rounds, getting the line, writing in my yardage book.

“I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting, and incredibly blessed for the journey that I have and the family that I’ve built. It’s just a really cool week to be here.”

As for what’s next, Wie West hopes to remain close to the sport.

“I continue to want to help the tour grow, female sports in general, and do everything in my power to keep empowering the women, closing the pay gap, whether it’s in sports and out of sports,” she said. “I think we have to lead by example, and I hope I can be a part of that.”

The U.S. Open tees off Thursday at Pebble Beach. The tournament will run through Sunday. The broadcast schedule is below, and the full tournament will be available to stream on Peacock.

  • Thursday, July 6: 6-11 p.m. ET — USA Network
  • Friday, July 7: 6-11 p.m. ET — USA Network
  • Saturday, July 8: 3-9 p.m. ET — NBC
  • Sunday, July 9: 3-9 p.m. ET — NBC

The U.S. Women’s Open begins Thursday at the Pine Needles Lodge and Golf Club in Southern Pines, N.C., with competitors looking to take home a piece of the $10 million purse. Just Women’s Sports has some storylines to follow as the tournament gets underway.

The end of the road (for now) for Michelle Wie West

Michelle Wie West announced last week that the U.S. Open would be her last for a while. After 22 years at the top of the golf world, Wie West is ready to step away from competitive golf.

She says she does plan to enter the 2023 U.S. Women’s Open at Pebble Beach. But while the five-time LPGA winner concedes she could change her mind, she also has been contemplating this break for a while.

“It’s been an amazing journey, and I’m very excited for what happens next,” she said Tuesday. “I have zero regrets in my career. There’s always that inkling of wishing I had done more. But no one is ever going to be 100 percent satisfied.

“I have definitely had an up-and-down career, but I’m extremely proud for the resiliency that I’ve shown. I’m extremely proud to have achieved the two biggest dreams that I’ve had — one being graduating from Stanford, and the other winning the U.S. Open.”

The return of Nelly Korda

According to Nelly Korda, her plan was not to return to competitive golf at the U.S. Open. But after undergoing surgery for a blot clot in her left arm, the journey back to 100 percent has landed her at the year’s second major.

Still the second-ranked player in the world, Korda is managing her expectations knowing that it’s been a few months since she’s played at a high level.

“I’m not expecting too much,” she said. “Girls are already in the middle of their season, they have a lot of rounds under their belts.

“I just missed it so much. As I got closer to this week, I started hitting it a little longer. I think the juices started flowing a little bit more, but I’m so happy to be out here against everyone.”

Making history

While the winner of this year’s tournament will take home nearly $2 million in prize money – a significant increase from last year – many of the game’s top golfers aren’t looking at the money as the be-all-end-all. Instead, it’s about the history they’ll make.

“I don’t care about money because these are majors,” world No. 1 Jin Young Ko told GolfChannel.com. “I don’t need to make more money, I want my name on the U.S. Open trophy, and I want history.”

Still, the money certainly marks a step in the right direction for equality in the sport of golf.

“At the end of the day, yes, the more zeros are better, but we’re all professional athletes and trying to play well in what we do and just having a good time out there,” Lydia Ko said. “And to be able to play for more money doing that is a bonus.”

The first golfers will tee off at 7 a.m. ET Thursday to start the first round. The first round will air on USA Network starting at 3 p.m. ET Thursday.

Michelle Wie West knew at a very young age that she was going to be a professional athlete. It was never a question of whether she would go pro, it was only a matter of finding the right sport.

In a recent conversation with Kelley O’Hara on the Just Women’s Sports podcast, Wie West laughs when recalling her early process of elimination. She quickly crossed off soccer, basketball, and gymnastics. She loved hitting in tennis but didn’t have the foot speed. She loved batting in baseball but couldn’t catch. Golf ended up a perfect fit, a sport where she could doggedly pursue excellence in what she loved most in all the sports she tried: connecting stick to ball as powerfully and precisely as possible.

Many saw young Michelle Wie as a child prodigy whose parents pushed her into the sporting limelight as early and often as possible, but in reality Wie West has always been an independent thinker. Her own internal barometer of happiness has been her guiding force throughout her career, leaving her largely unfazed by critics and naysayers.

One source of her early confidence was just her sheer physical presence. At age 10 she was 5’7”, 165 lbs. and could hit the ball 275 yards.

“I was an absolute unit,” she laughingly tells O’Hara. “I loved being outside. I was a total tomboy.”

She had no qualms about being the only girl on the basketball court or the only girl on her youth baseball team, even making the all-star team in the latter. By 14 years of age, her unprecedented trajectory in golf was already well underway. She had won enough youth and adult amateur events, and was enough of a media draw, for Sony to offer her a sponsor’s invite to their 2004 PGA tournament in Hawaii.

Wie West tells O’Hara the decision to accept the invite was easy: “My mindset was ok, I played on the boys’ team in baseball. I made the all-star team. All my friends are boys. I was like a super tomboy. So I didn’t feel like that was a really bizarre thing to do.”

In that first PGA event at 14 years old, she missed the cut by one stroke, beating 47 adult men, including seven major winners. She went on to accept several PGA sponsor invites throughout her career, undeterred by critics who wrote them off as undeserved publicity stunts.

Wie West’s entire path to becoming a pro golfer was unconventional. The typical route is to play on your high school team and in junior golf events and then get recruited to a college team and transition to pro tour events. For a youngster with Wie West’s skills, a full college scholarship was all but guaranteed.

But Wie West always made up her own mind about what was best for her, and she decided she could turn pro without sacrificing her educational goals. She was regularly placing high enough to qualify for prize money, but as an amateur she wasn’t allowed to accept the rewards. That didn’t make sense to her, so she decided she would do both: become a professional golfer and still go to her dream school, Stanford University.

“I knew I wanted to go to Stanford. That was not something I was going to give up,” she tells O’Hara, at the time thinking, “I can turn pro and I have good enough grades and maybe a cool enough story that I can get into Stanford.”

So, as a sweet sixteenth birthday gift to herself, she signed contracts with Nike and Sony and officially turned pro. Two years later she was admitted to Stanford University. While many speculated that attending such a rigorous academic school would negatively impact her golf career, Wie West wasn’t concerned.

“I thought that even if it took me away from golf a little bit, it was worth it,” she tells O’Hara. Looking back, she still believes going to Stanford was one of the smartest decisions she’s ever made.

Wie West’s confidence to do things her own way has also been evident on the putting green. After a mid-career slump dropped her to 119th on the LPGA tour in putting average, she came up with a very unconventional new technique. The idea first came to her when she was paired with a much shorter player who was nailing all her putts.

“I’m using my Stanford brain here and I think the scientific reason why she is putting better than me is because her eyes are closer to the golf ball,” she recalls thinking to O’Hara, “If I get closer to the ball… I will start putting better.”

In order to accomplish this, the 6-foot-tall Wie West began leaning over almost 90 degrees in a new, aptly named “tabletop” putting stance.

She even laughed along with those commenting on the peculiar image of her tall frame bent at such an awkward angle. Scientific validity aside, the change was successful for Wie West.

“From that moment on I started feeling really comfortable and that was something that I was searching for,” she explains to O’Hara. She went on to win two LPGA events the following year, including her first Major win at the 2014 U.S. Open.

For someone who was in the national (and international) spotlight at such a young age, the fact that she’s never been all that influenced by public perception is rare and impressive. In making big decisions, Wie West has always maximized for personal happiness by confidently trusting an inner voice that has guided her on a path that’s uniquely her own.

Listen to Michelle Wie West’s full conversation with Kelley O’Hara on the Just Women’s Sports podcast here.

Eighteen months ago, Michelle Wie West stepped away from professional golf when severe pain from her latest injury left little to no enjoyment for her out on the course. Turning her focus to joyful events in her personal life, she got married a few months later (to partner Jonnie West), and then the duo became a trio when their daughter Makenna arrived this past June.

In a recent conversation with Kelley O’Hara on the Just Women’s Sports podcast, Wie West revealed she had always planned to retire from professional golf once she started a family. While there are countless surprises for new mothers in their first year of raising a small human, one that is often confounding is how you’ll feel about your career and your level of desire to return to it. One surprise for Wie West has been a newly re-lit competitive fire. (And we hope it’s not the lack of sleep or breastfeeding endorphins talking.)

By far the toughest moments of Wie West’s career have been the onslaught of injuries she’s had to overcome. She’s dealt with neck, back, hip, knee and ankle issues over the years, but the real demon has been the ongoing problems with her wrist resulting from a fracture that never healed correctly back when she was seventeen. It was intrusive pain from this thirteen year-old wrist issue that left her in tears after her last attempt to return to form in a June 2019 tournament.

It’s no wonder Wie West always felt like her body was against her.

“I just got to the point where I expected it, I expected the worst from my body,” she tells O’Hara. But the experience of pregnancy and new motherhood completely changed her relationship with her body. Creating a whole new human being and bringing it into the world left her in awe of what she was physically capable of. Instead of an adversary in the way of her athletic goals, she began to see it with an entirely new perspective.

“It definitely taught me to be a lot more forgiving of my body,” she explains to O’Hara, “I have so much more respect for my body now.”

An even bigger spark in relighting her competitive drive came when Wie West found out she was having a girl. As a youngster, Wie West learned about toughness and perseverance from her own mother. Her mom, Bo Wie, had been a serious golfer, dancer, and pageant contestant for many years.

“My mom had a very competitive side to her too and I really looked up to her for that,” she tells O’Hara. “She would tell me stories about how many blisters she got on her feet from training all day long and I kind of saw that as a badge of honor. I was like, ‘That’s so cool. I should be doing that.’”

This early impression of what it means to be a strong woman, combined with a 5’7” and 165 lb physique at age 10, resulted in Wie West confidently competing in a variety of youth sports even when she was the only girl. Her enjoyment at bridging the athletic gender gap was evident later on during the numerous times she accepted invites to play in PGA tournaments, starting when she was just 14 years old.

Now with a daughter of her own she’s realized she’s not quite done transforming the public perception of what sportswomen are capable of.

“The moment I found out that my baby was a girl really changed my perspective on the world and how I want to leave the world for her,” she tells O’Hara. “I want to lead by example, and that’s the driving force now to get back.”

The final piece of kindling fueling this comeback fire is the joy Wie West has experienced out on the course with her new family of three. As a kid, her favorite thing to do was spend the weekends golfing all day with her parents. Now, golfing with her new husband and their even newer baby girl is helping her reconnect with the reason she fell in love with the sport in the first place.

“It’s definitely brought that childhood joy back,” she tells O’Hara with a smile in her voice. “Having that inspiration, I think it drives you in a very different way.”

Consider it another chapter in Wie West’s ongoing story. First the child prodigy, she’s now the resurgent mother.

Listen to Michelle Wie West’s full conversation with Kelley O’Hara on the Just Women’s Sports podcast here.