Lorena Ochoa is the number one women’s golfer in the LPGA for three years, won two majors, 27 tour victories, and was honored for four straight years as the LPGA Tour’s Player of the Year. With all these achievements that she has gone through you rarely here anything about her. Just to give you a comparison of what Ochoa is to her sport would be like saying that she is the Derek Jeter of baseball or the Kobe Bryant of basketball. The sad thing for the LPGA is that she is leaving in her prime at the age of 28. She is not forced to leave the sport like many other athletes either male or female for misconduct, but instead she has made a choice that she wants to start a family. Ochoa has said that she has accomplished everything she wanted in golf and is looking forward to having a family.
When reading about Ochoa retiring I first that about how difficult it would leave a sport in their prime stage of their career. At the same time each athlete knows when to hang-up their cleats. Ochoa is going to leave the LPGA being the number one and no one can take that away from her. I am surprised that we do not hear about women athletes leaving to start a family. At the same time I am happy for Lorena Ochoa for her accomplishments on and off the field, and I wish her the best with starting a family.
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What is interesting to me about this whole situation is how much press Ochoa is getting due to her decision. Granted, I do not follow golf, but I had never heard of her until all the press about her leaving golf to start a family. I decided to look into it a bit more, and found that while she did get news coverage as the best women’s golf player, the amount of coverage she got drastically increased after she announced her retirement from golf. Even larger, non golf news venues like USA Today picked up the story of her wanting a quit to start a family. It seems like her just being an amazing golfer was not enough for major headlines, but the idea of one of the best female athletes quitting to fill feminine rolls is all over the media.
I did a media search in Google, and every headline about Ochoa had something to do with her leaving the LPGA:
“Golf report: Sorenstam knows Ochoa's path”
“Ochoa Is 6th in Her Farewell”
“Ochoa to play final tournament next week”
“Lorena Ochoa retiring from LPGA”
“Ochoa Says Goodbye to Golf and Hello to the Rest of Her Life”
Most of these articles really focus of her decision to put a family first or her marriage. While most do mention her success in golf, almost all of them play up her emotional feminine side, talking about how she announced her retirement with tears in her eyes. It seems to be reinforcing feminine, family comes first roles for female athletes.
http://www.google.com/search?q=lorena+ochoa&hl=en&source=univ&tbs=nws:1&tbo=u&ei=CNvhS43QHY6KNuDHtZ8D&sa=X&oi=news_group&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CBYQsQQwAA&cad=cbv
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/gameon/post/2010/04/lorena-ochoa-retiring-from-lpga-1/1
Sarah Orchard
338i sec 5
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