Europe’s Solheim Cup captain Anna Nordqvist has announced her shock departure from professional golf after a career which has spanned almost two decades.

The Swede, who is a three-time major winner, will play her final tournament this weekend at the FM Championship in Boston before retiring from the sport.

The 39-year-old’s announcement comes two weeks out from captaining her first-ever Solheim Cup at Bernardus Golf in the Netherlands. Nordqvist featured in nine Solheim Cups as a player, winning four and retaining the trophy once. She was a playing vice-captain to Suzann Pettersen in 2023 and 2024.

Her first major win came in her second year as a professional when she won the Women’s PGA Championship in 2009. Wins at the Evian Championship in 2017 and the Women’s British Open at Carnoustie in 2021 helped cement her golfing legacy.

“I can’t say it has always been easy, especially being so far away from my family but they have supported me every step of the way. I’ve fallen so many times, but I never gave up and I stood up every time I fell,” a statement shared by Nordqvist to social media read.

“I am forever thankful for everything this game has given me and the people I have met along the way. I don’t know how to say goodbye to something that means so much to me but this is going to be my last week walking inside the ropes competing on tour.

“l am not sure what the future has in store for me but it is with a grateful heart I have decided to retire from playing professional golf to focus on my health and my family. Thank you to everyone who has supported me in this journey and been part of it along the way it has meant the world to me.”

In an interview with The Athletic last month ahead of the Amundi Evian Championship in France, Nordqvist opened up about the personal sacrifices she was forced to make in order to maintain her career as a professional golfer. One of them included rarely getting to see her family back home in Sweden.

“When you struggle or when there’s a lot going on, it’d be nice just to be able to crash at your mom’s couch or have a home-cooked meal or see your brothers,” Nordqvist said in July. “When you get texts from your nieces and nephews saying ‘I miss you, when are you coming home?’ and you know it’s not going to be for another three months, how do you break it to them?

“It’s getting harder because you start missing birthdays, you start losing milestones. My nieces and nephews are anywhere from between five and 14 now and so much happens. They are so much fun and I love seeing the world through their eyes. I don’t feel like there’s anything better.

“Unfortunately, I don’t have my own kids so they’ve kind of been the highlight of my life. It’s obviously something that’s getting harder and harder because you feel like you want to be there, you should be there, but you just can’t.”

Nordqvist, who currently resides in Scottsdale, Arizona, has 16 professional wins in total including nine on the LPGA Tour and five on the Ladies European Tour.

“The last year-and-a-half has been crazy busy with the Solheim Cup planning and trying to do that while I still manage my own game,” she said in July. “I haven’t had a lot of time for myself so that’s been tough but, at the end of the day, I go to bed knowing that I’ve done the best I can each day and that’s all I can really do.”

“The Athletic Football Show” is previewing all 32 teams leading up to the start of the 2026 NFL season. Below are select quotes from the show’s preview of the Kansas City Chiefs. The quotes are edited for clarity. You can watch the whole preview on YouTube and in the embedded video below, or listen to the full AFC West preview wherever you get your podcasts.

Derrik Klassen on what about the Chiefs most excites him: This is a team that for years has not had an explosive runner and really has struggled to gain explosive plays, and they just signed Kenneth Walker to a huge deal, and that’s kind of his whole deal.

I think sometimes it’s hard to figure out exactly how much a running back’s value is going to cascade to the rest of the team. In the case of the Kansas City Chiefs where they were so historically bad at generating these field-flipping runs, bringing in a player like Kenneth Walker, where he obviously gives that to you, it’s pretty easy to see how that actually adds something to this offense. I do think that that gets them back to the formula that was working for them in 2019 and 2020, where they were more explosive on offense. I just really believe in what Ken Walker is going to do here.

Robert Mays on what he’ll be watching the first month of the season: I’m interested in the structure of the offense, because this is a team that was incredibly siloed. Beyond the changes of what running the ball under center could do for their explosiveness, I just think having more optionality and murkiness about what you’re doing situationally is huge.

A lot of teams in the NFL have done this. They’ve gone back to an under-center world in part because you’re giving away no information by doing that, while making things easier on the line and on the quarterback. The Chiefs last year were one of the most siloed teams in the NFL. Per TruMedia, 19.3 percent play-action rate from under center last year, which was 31st in the NFL. They ran the ball 80 percent of the time when they were under center last season. That’s not going to happen again because of the running back, and because they know there are benefits waiting for them if they diversify that a little bit.

Dave Helman on what’s keeping him up at night: What if Kenneth Walker’s presence in the offense isn’t enough to change the fact that this could be a bottom-five receiver corps? What if Rashee Rice has lost a step for various reasons, be they injury or incarceration related? Xavier Worthy weighs 165 pounds and dealt with injury last year. We joked about it several times this summer — and I hope Cyrus Allen is awesome — but if a fifth-round pick is the talk of camp and there’s a genuine panic when he suffers a practice injury, that’s not a good sign if you’re supposed to contend for meaningful things.

I went through the teams and I was like, ‘Who do I think definitively has a worse receiver corps than the Chiefs?’ And I came up with Miami and Vegas. This could be a really, really bad unit, and I don’t know if Kenneth Walker alone can fix that.

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