Walking away from professional golf after spending nearly two decades competing at the highest level is never an easy decision. However, for five-time PGA Tour winner Ryan Moore, stepping away from the sport proved to be exactly what he needed. After years of traveling, competing, and keeping up with the demands of the Tour, the American golfer reached a point where he simply wanted to be home.

Moore recently opened up about his decision during an appearance on Golf’s Subpar, hosted by Colt Knost and Drew Stoltz. The 43-year-old revealed that he was already feeling worn out toward the end of the 2024 season.

After spending years competing on the PGA Tour, the demands of professional golf had begun taking their toll.

“Well, so I was pretty worn out at the end of 2024 and it had been a grind the last couple years and I took off, I think it was from the middle of December. A few of us good friends, we go on a trip down to Cabo and go play some golf and kind of goof around a little bit. And we did that kind of middle of December after the end of 2024 and I did not touch a club for six months. I mean legitimately nothing for six months and then the first thing I did was like in the middle of May it was like a charity scramble thing for my kids school. I went out and played. That was the first time I had touched the club, you know, first six months after kind of being done. And that was actually really nice,” Ryan Moore said.

The break also reflected a significant change in his relationship with golf. Moore estimated that he played approximately 30 rounds throughout 2025. It is a considerable reduction from the more than 200 rounds he had played annually for around 20 consecutive years.

For someone who had spent most of his adult life treating golf as a profession, that change represented a completely different way of experiencing the sport.

While family priorities played a significant role in his decision, Moore also expressed frustration with how the PGA Tour had evolved over the final years of his career.

The American turned professional in 2005 after an outstanding amateur career at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. He earned his PGA Tour opportunities through sponsor exemptions and went directly from college golf to competing on the Tour.

He remained part of the circuit through the 2024 season. This gave him nearly 20 years of experience at the highest level.

However, Moore felt the Tour had undergone considerable changes during his final years.

“The last five years on the PGA Tour more changed than my first 15 years,” he said.

He explained that new systems, policies, and adjustments seemed to arrive frequently. This made it increasingly difficult for veteran players to feel comfortable with the direction of the organization.

Moore also believed that experienced players who had won tournaments, represented the United States in Ryder Cups, and competed in major championships were receiving less consideration than they once had.

Reflecting on that change, he said he sometimes felt the message toward established players was essentially whether “Can you just kind of go away?”

Importantly, Moore acknowledged that this could have been his personal perception rather than an accurate representation of the Tour’s intentions. Nevertheless, he believed other veteran golfers might have experienced similar feelings.

His comments also connect with concerns he had raised publicly earlier in 2026.

In a February 4 interview with Golfweek, Moore was particularly critical of the Tour’s handling of membership and playing opportunities.

“They have no idea what they’re doing. They keep saying a lot of things that turn out to be very wrong,” he said.

He also questioned the concentration of benefits among the Tour’s leading players. The argument was that the promised financial and competitive advantages were not reaching a sufficiently large section of the membership.

“My issue with everything they’ve done is they just throw everything out there, claim there’s a trickle down, but it doesn’t trickle down past 20 players,” Moore explained.

He was also questioning whether the changing competitive environment offered an appealing future for established players outside the top tier.

Moore’s concerns about the Tour’s structure were accompanied by a difficult change in his competitive position.

He finished No. 151 in the 2024 FedExCup Fall standings. This left him with past champion status rather than the full playing privileges he had previously enjoyed.

Although he remained eligible for certain tournaments, his opportunities became considerably more limited.

Ryan Moore passed on two opposite-field events for which he was eligible. He also received a late opportunity to compete at the 2025 Farmers Insurance Open after several withdrawals. But he was committed to appearing at the PGA Show for TRUE Linkswear, the golf footwear company he co-founded with his brother.

His only PGA Tour appearance in 2025 eventually came at the Procore Championship, where he missed the cut after gaining entry through withdrawals.

The Tour also approved substantial changes to its competitive structure in November 2024. Several eligibility and field-size adjustments were scheduled to take effect in 2026.

Among the changes was a reduction in the number of players receiving fully exempt status through the FedExCup standings. From the top 125, it went down to the top 100. Players finishing between 101st and 125th would instead receive conditional status.

The maximum field size at most single-course full-field tournaments was also reduced from 156 to 144 players, with some events moving to 132 or 120-player fields.

The PGA Tour explained that these adjustments were intended to improve competitive opportunities for exempt members.

However, from the perspective of players like Ryan Moore, the increasingly competitive environment made maintaining a regular schedule more challenging.

Family responsibilities became more important than competing for Ryan Moore

Perhaps the most personal part of Moore’s explanation involved his family.

For more than 20 years, professional golf had required him to spend approximately 25 to 30 weeks traveling every year. That schedule meant regularly being away from home and missing important moments in his children’s lives.

However, his priorities began changing as his children grew older.

The American golfer explained that he now had a child in middle school, who was only a couple of years away from driving. The realization that he was missing out on important stages of his children’s lives had increasingly weighed on him.

“When I went out on tour I kind of didn’t want to be there. I wanted to be home. When I was home, I felt like I should be playing,” he explained.

That internal conflict eventually became exhausting.

He previously offered a clearer picture of what stepping away had allowed him to experience.

“I actually got to participate in my own life for the first time ever, which was nice,” he said.

But he is not the only one to have ended his professional golf journey like this.

Hunter Mahan stepped away from professional golf in 2021 at the age of 39. He a six-time PGA Tour winner and three-time Ryder Cup representative.

In a 2024 interview with Golf Monthly, Mahan discussed how difficult it was to maintain the commitment required to compete at the highest level while raising a family.

The two players have different stories, particularly regarding Ryan Moore’s criticism of the PGA Tour’s changing membership structure. However, their experiences highlight a similar challenge. The demands of elite professional golf can become increasingly difficult to balance with family responsibilities as players get older.