Ahn Sun-ju, 39, one of the faces of South Korean women's golf, announced her retirement from the Japan Ladies Professional Golf Association (JLPGA) tour on the 14th through her social media account. The decision had been kept so quiet that Shin Ji-yai, 38, who shared the same era with Ahn and still competes as a front-runner, told a Japanese outlet she was startled by the sudden news.
In a telephone interview with Seoul Economic Daily on the 16th, Ahn said it had become difficult to lift a game that had slipped. "I did not want to think about it, but the truth is there is a wall of age," she said. "I decided the time had come to say goodbye to the JLPGA tour, which has been my main stage for more than a decade."
Ahn won seven times on the Korea Ladies Professional Golf Association (KLPGA) tour before moving to Japan in 2010, where she piled up 28 career victories. She claimed the Japanese money title four times, in 2010, 2011, 2014 and 2018, and ranks sixth on the tour's all-time earnings list with about 1.1 billion yen. She stayed in Korea during the COVID-19 period, gave birth to twins, a son and a daughter, in 2021, and competed mainly on the KLPGA tour afterward. She showed she was still a force with two runner-up finishes on the KLPGA tour in 2023, but this year she missed more cuts than she made.
Looking back on 21 years on tour, Ahn said she was grateful simply to be a player who gets a retirement event. "It means a lot that my final event comes at the tournament where I won for the last time, in 2018," she said. "I worry about whether I can show a good performance, but the consideration of the people around me gave me courage." The Nobuta Group Masters GC Ladies, to be held in Hyogo Prefecture, Japan, on the 22nd, will be her 256th JLPGA start and her last.
Ahn holds a lifetime exemption on the KLPGA tour by virtue of her 20 JLPGA victories. "I also set my sights on a lifetime exemption on the Japan tour, and it is a lasting regret that I fell two wins short," she said. "But I am looking forward to spending long stretches of time close to the children I could not help but neglect."
She said she was retiring only from the Japan tour, not from golf as a player, but she does not plan to use her KLPGA lifetime exemption as often as she does now. "I expect to enter one or two events a year, maybe five at most," she said. "I am also considering playing the KLPGA senior tour, which is for players aged 40 and over. When I think about that, it means becoming a rookie again, so it feels exciting."
Ahn laughed as she recalled a long-standing criticism. "For a long time I heard a lot of people say, 'Ahn Sun-ju never smiles during a round,'" she said. "It may be late, but for a while now I have been trying to smile even when I play badly. I am realizing all over again that golf can be played while enjoying it."