Amy Olson always had this plan.
Play on the LPGA Tour for 10 years. Get married. Have kids. Retire to focus on motherhood.
So, after she announced she was pregnant last March, Olson knew time was ticking on her playing career. She teed it up in the U.S. Women’s Open at Pebble Beach Golf Links seven months pregnant and went on maternity leave not long after, ultimately having her daughter, Carly Gray Olson, on September 15.
Becoming a mother is something that often cataclysmically shifts an athlete’s mindset, and Olson was no exception, making it that much easier to share via Instagram that she’d be retiring from professional golf, a decision that Olson couldn’t have been more at peace with when she finally hit the post button.
“Truly, my biggest dream is to be a world-class mom and a world-class wife,” said Olson. “Those are my two biggest goals, and that looks different for everybody. But for me, it means being present more than I’ve been able to while I’ve been on Tour.
“I have so much appreciation for what my mom did for my brother and I, and the kind of life and home life that she cultivated. She was a stay-at-home mom. She ended up homeschooling my brother and I, and she's a huge role model for me. There's a lot of things that she did, (and) I want to be able to walk in her footsteps.”
Every ending, no matter the reason, often has its bittersweetness, its moments of reflection and wondering what would’ve happened had all the what-ifs come true. Olson definitely has things she wanted to achieve in her professional golf career that didn’t end up panning out – winning a tournament, winning a major, playing in the Solheim Cup – but she isn’t a person who lingers on the could’ve, would’ve, should’ve moments in her life.
“When I think about regrets, it would have to be something that I could have done differently,” said Olson. “I'm sure you could point to different times where I could have treated somebody better. I could have said something, and I didn't. It's not that I walked perfectly. But as far as golf and what I put into it, I don't think I could have tried harder. I don't think I could have put more into it than I did.”
When she looks back at her last decade on the LPGA Tour, some moments stand out better in Olson’s mind than others. Victory eluded her at both The Amundi Evian Championship in 2018 and the U.S. Women’s Open in 2020, the latter of which saw Olson unexpectedly lose her father-in-law Lee that Saturday night.
Those final few days in Houston were emotional for Olson, who grappled with waves of grief during the rain-delayed final round that was pushed to a Monday finish at Champions Club. But it’s a moment she now looks back on with understanding, knowing that as heart-wrenching as it was at the time, she grew from that experience in the end.
“The two majors that I contended in, the Evian and then the U.S. (Women’s) Open, both of them ended up in heartache for me whether it was the tragedy around the U.S. (Women’s) Open with my husband's father passing away,” Olson reflected. “It was really, really hard. But I feel like it encapsulates so much of life where you have hard things you have to do.
“You get through them, you overcome and you move forward. That's truly what golf taught me in the end is that you keep putting yourself out there. You keep trying. You keep working hard. You don't always have control of the results, but no matter what, you keep moving forward.”
And there are other times that Olson vividly recalls for entirely different reasons. Sometimes the days as a professional athlete blend together, but there are moments that inexplicably will always stay in a player’s mind long after their final score is posted.
“Another memory that I remember that nobody else probably remembers, but at the Kia Classic, I was like six over through (33) holes,” Olson recalled. “I'm like, I'm gonna miss the cut here. I end up rattling off a few birdies to make the cut. Then, on the weekend, I ended up 10 under and finished second place.
“So being able to turn it around and still believe it even though things weren't going really well at the beginning of that tournament, to turn it around and have an amazing run that ended up in second place, that was so much fun.”
Fun for Olson now includes tummy time and diaper changes, car seats and baby clothes, and she couldn’t be happier about it. Many wondered if she might turn her attention towards a passion project or work on becoming a professional pickleball player once she decided to step away from golf. But Olson’s free time is just a bit more limited with Carly in the picture.
“It's a little hard now that she's on the move,” said Olson. “I can't just put her in her stroller and go play pickleball. That'll be one of those things that we want to do as a family. I can't wait until she can pick up a paddle, and we can hit it back and forth. Grant and I, we love being teammates on the pickleball court. We maybe even love beating each other on opposite teams. But being active and being able to do those things with our family and our friends is definitely part of the plan.”
This Mother’s Day marks Olson’s first with her daughter, and while she isn’t bidding farewell to the LPGA Tour at a tournament like some others might have done, she wants her counterparts to know just how much she enjoyed playing and living life alongside them these past 10 years. Saying goodbye to something that’s been a constant in your life since you were a little girl is incredibly difficult, especially for a player like Olson, who has developed deep, personal relationships with many that she competed alongside week in and week out on Tour. But she’s at ease seeing her road as a pro golfer come to an end.
“When you get to the end of any sort of a journey, what you remember is the people,” Olson said. “I've made so many good friends in my time out there, and that's probably the hardest thing is moving on and realizing you're not going to see them in a day-to-day capacity like you did before. I would just say thank you to all of the other players on the LPGA. I so enjoyed our time on the fairways. There are so many conversations that happen between shots, and I enjoyed every one of them.”
Despite this bittersweet farewell, Olson is as ready as ever for this new chapter and is looking forward to chasing a new dream as Carly’s mother. Who knows? We may see her tee it up again down the line, but those plans are very far in the future, at the moment, as Olson hasn’t practiced enough to consider competing one last time in a retirement event.
“I want people to know that if I come back and I tee it up, or if I go play a U.S. (Women’s) Open qualifier or whatever, it's for fun,” said Olson. “It's no longer for my career. It's no longer my job. I want it to be a signal that I'm in a different mindset now. I think the biggest thing is I have different dreams. It's not that those dreams have gone away that I wouldn't want to hoist a trophy. But I have bigger dreams that I am prioritizing now.”
And as she celebrates her first Mother’s Day at home with Carly and Grant, thoughts about winning and golf courses and major titles will be the furthest thing from Olson’s mind.
She will instead just revel in the moment with her family, content with life outside of professional golf and excited about everything her future has in store, motherhood and all.
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