My assignment was to cover the PGA Tour’s Zurich Classic of New Orleans. But when the plane touched down in the Big Easy on a sunny Tuesday and I powered up my phone it burst alive with a symphony of sound heralding missed calls and texts all with the same message: “Lorena Ochoa says she’s retiring and will explain at a news conference in Mexico City on Friday. Get there.”
This was shocking news. Ochoa was No. 1 in the Rolex Rankings, a spot she’d held for 158 consecutive weeks, had won on the LPGA Tour 27 times, including two major championships, and was only 28 years old. That she walked away from tournament golf in April 2010 at the same age as the game’s greatest amateur, Bobby Jones, 80 years earlier, was both coincidental and appropriate.
She and Jones were superstars who placed family above fame. They found joy in multiple activities and not a singular pursuit. In their hearts, both Ochoa and Jones loved golf more than they loved competition. They found serenity in the solitary pursuit of perfection and shunned the attention success brings.
My next flight landed me in Mexico City for Ochoa’s public announcement at the Centro Banamex Convention Center. On the ride back to Benito Juárez International Airport, my taxi driver eloquently summed up the impact of Ochoa on Mexico. His English was limited and his knowledge of golf even less, but that taxi driver likely spoke for an entire nation.
“Lorena Ochoa, goodbye to golf?” he asked, guessing why I was in Mexico. “Adios, eh?” he said, shaking his head sadly. Then he kissed the tips of two fingers, gently touched the crucifix dangling from his rearview mirror and said: “Ella tiene un buen corazon” – she has a good heart.
When Ochoa announced that after the following week’s Tres Marias Championship she was retiring from competitive golf, the mood in the packed room was more celebratory than sad, marking the beginning of what’s next rather than the end of a remarkable career.
“Today is the most special day in my career,” Ochoa said, speaking in Spanish. “Every career has a beginning and an end, and we are at the end.” Addressing her parents, Javier, a real estate executive, and Marcela, an artist, she said: “You taught me to fight for my dreams.”
Looking at Andrés Conesa, the CEO of Aeromexico whom she married the previous December, she said, “We want to have a family. I can tell you I am the happiest woman in the world. I will never forget the last eight years. I wanted to play with the best players and I wanted to represent Mexico worldwide and I achieved that.”
Now, 16 years after walking away while still No. 1, Ochoa is living a very different life than that of a touring pro, a life exactly as she dreamed – focused on family, faith and her foundation. On this day, she calls me from her car while returning from a promotional event for her foundation near Mexico City, where she lives.
“It’s been a dream for me to be able to help with education nationwide. That is a big responsibility and I am active working all year.”
— Lorena Ochoa
“I’m still pretty busy,” Lorena says, punctuating her sentence with the same endearing laugh everyone grew to love when she was on tour. Then, almost to prove her point, she quickly adds: “I’m getting a call from school right now; let me call you back.” When she does it’s with an apology for the interruption, but not for making family first.
Now, instead of banging golf balls on the range, Ochoa’s day begins with a morning run and then she awakens her three children – Pedro, 14, Julia, 12, and Diego, 10 – and drives them to the school bus. “I try to spend the afternoon with my kids,” she says, “go to soccer practice and be a normal mom.”
Ochoa, now 44, is a normal mom who was once the best female golfer in the world. Now, she heads the BECAR Fundación Lorena Ochoa, a charity that helps educate disadvantaged children in a country where many fit that description.
“Thank you for asking that,” Ochoa responds when questioned about her foundation. “We’ve been growing so much. Today, we have 29 schools in 11 states in Mexico. Last year we gave scholarships allowing almost 12,000 kids to have an opportunity to study. It’s been a dream for me to be able to help with education nationwide. That is a big responsibility and I am active working all year.”
There is still golf in Lorena’s life but it is no longer the centerpiece, rather a tool to help her charity.
“I practiced a little bit at the end of last year to play some exhibitions here in Mexico,” she says. “I usually have three of four events I play [a year] for either my foundation or my sponsors. I’m playing OK. I hit the ball really short, but I’m playing OK,” once again finishing her thought with that laugh.
Is there another Ochoa in the professional pipeline?
“Pedro is the one who likes the game,” she says. “I caddie for him sometimes. Diego is learning just for fun. Do I see any serious golfer? No, for sure.”
Few LPGA players have known Ochoa as well as Reilley Rankin. They met while playing college golf and grew close on the Futures Tour, now the Epson Tour, where Ochoa won three times and Rankin twice.
“We spent a lot of time together on and off the course,” Rankin says from her home in South Carolina. “Her brother and dad were on the road often, and my dad was as well, so we all became one big family. We played practice rounds together, shared dinners, and spent our days off fishing or exploring whatever city we were in. When we reached the LPGA Tour, our friendship only grew stronger. We traveled together most weeks, leaned on each other, and built a bond that has lasted a lifetime. I am incredibly grateful to have her as a best friend for life.”
“Lorena’s character has always been bigger and more impressive than her résumé.”
— Reilley Rankin
Rankin, who has a degree in child and family development, is a passionate woman whose window on the world was shaped, in part, by an accident in which she broke her back when she jumped off a rocky cliff into a lake and landed wrong, forcing her to miss the 1999 and 2000 college seasons. But she returned in 2001 to help the University of Georgia win the NCAA Championship. In 2007, Rankin went on a humanitarian mission to Rwanda with five other LPGA players, a trip I was fortunate to be on. In those two weeks, I learned a lot about Rankin, especially watching her interact with children in a country of 8 million that had 1 million orphans. That passion comes out when she describes her relationship with Ochoa.
“What I’ve said is from my heart and I just feel like there is a more profound and impactful way of saying it,” were the words that poured out of Rankin. “I’ve always said Lorena is a better person than she is a golfer. She did everything with her heart and with integrity. She never let success change or define her. She is kind in a quiet, genuine way, deeply loyal, grounded, and one of the most caring people I have ever met.”
When you hear Rankin talk you understand that her bond with Ochoa was built on the reality that golf is a part of their life and not the entirety of who they are.
“Lorena’s character has always been bigger and more impressive than her résumé,” Rankin says. “She is the same person with trophies and accolades as she is without them, and the golf world was simply fortunate to witness her become one of the greatest players in women’s golf. Golf really is just a small part of what makes life so special, but without it, I never would have met one of the most extraordinary people I know.”