PACIFIC PALISADES — If this is it for Michelle Wie West’s time on the professional golf tour, the LPGA Tour’s social media post on Friday afternoon, after she missed the cut at the 2026 U.S. Women’s Open, summed it up quite well.
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“Michelle Wie West is walking away from Riv with what matters most,” the text read, followed by the emoji of two hands forming the shape of a heart. It was accompanied by photos and video of Wie West and her daughter, Makenna, who turns 6 in two weeks.
Wie West stepped away following the 2023 Women’s Open at Pebble Beach, but she used a pregnancy exemption, which extended her 10-year tournament champion exemption by a year, to return for this tournament. Part of the reason was that it was at Riviera, and part of it was the opportunity to share this with her family – Makenna, son Jagger, who turns 2 in October, and husband Jonnie West, son of the late Jerry West and an executive with the Golden State Warriors, who caddied for her this week.
(Also among those ties: Jerry West, as intense a competitor on the golf course as he was on the basketball court or in the executive suite, was from 2010-13 the tournament director of the February PGA stop at Riviera, then known as the Northern Trust Open. That was a strong part of the reason why Wie West wanted to play here.)
She will head home, after rounds of 75 and 74, her 7-over total missing the cut by three shots, while the players who made the cut at 4-over or better – led by former UCLA player Alison Lee and Ruoning Lin of China, who share the lead at 4-under through 36 holes – will carry on. Going into Saturday’s round, 12 players are within two shots of the lead.
But Wie West accomplished a mission this week.
“Obviously I would be lying to say I wasn’t disappointed,” she said after Friday’s 74 put her three shots over the projected cut of 4-over. “I would have loved to have made the cut today. … But I had a blast honestly, with playing here at Riv, such a special week to have played it, and to have family, friends, a lot of familiar faces coming out, it was a lot of fun.
“I hit some good shots, hit some good putts, and kind of felt that feeling again, which is awesome.”
The urge never really goes away, does it? Wie West will not be totally done with competitive golf even after this, because she has committed to playing in the WTGL, the women’s counterpart to Tiger Woods’ Florida-based arena golf circuit.
And beyond that?
“Pebble felt like the good-bye,” she said. “This doesn’t feel like the week that I’m ending it on. It was really fun to practice the way that I did, come back and grind. It was fun out there.
“I made some good birdies today. It’s fun to just hit shots under pressure. You don’t feel pressure – I don’t feel pressure in my normal life. There’s really nothing I do that recreates this, so it was fun to feel it again.”
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An ESPN.com story by Charlotte Gibson, published earlier this week related a moment in May when the Golf Channel aired a replay of the final round of the 2014 Open at Pinehurst, N.C., the day Wie West won her only major. Moments after she received a text informing her that it was on, her son was in front of the screen, transfixed by watching Mommy swing a golf club.
So make no mistake, this week was a family affair.
“Definitely a madhouse,” she said. “Two out of three dogs came, both kids came, nanny came, parents came, and it’s just amazing chaos. I had a lot of help this week, and it was really awesome to kind of come back and know that, even though I missed the cut, I go back and I’m going to have fun with my kids.”
Wie West noted that at that last Open at Pebble Beach, Makenna was 2 and not yet old enough to have any memories of it. Now? Evidently she’s not shy about leaving her mom notes with advice.
“My daughter is like the best sports psychologist I’ve ever had, honestly,” she said before the tournament began. “But I think this week – my husband and I were talking about this a lot – I’m going to try to live by the words I tell my daughter. I always tell her before a game or a tournament, whatever, I say I don’t care about the results. All I care about is a good attitude and that you try your hardest. Right?”
Those with long memories recall Michelle Wie the phenom, the preternatural teenage golfer from Hawaii who turned pro at age 16 to massive amounts of attention and endorsements. She played in tournaments on sponsors’ exemptions – including eight men’s professional tournaments, failing to finish in seven of them – before reaching 18, when she could officially join the LPGA. And she received lots of pushback from those who felt she should wait her turn.
Her five tournament victories, including that 2014 U.S. Women’s Open championship, seem a low number in a career of nearly two decades. But look past the numbers. She is now involved with the Mizuho Americas Open, a May tournament in New Jersey where LPGA players tee it up alongside 24 top-ranked American Junior Golf Association players.
And consider: Two of the six amateurs who made Friday’s cut, at 4-over, are 16-year-old Aphrodite Deng of Canada and 17-year-old Asterisk Talley, from Chowchilla.
Beyond that, there is the example Wie West has set and the message she’s sending to her own children. By those measures, her career is a rousing success.
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