There’s a certain ache every golfer knows- the one you feel when you watch someone tee it up and your brain instantly remembers the sound of the ball hitting the club. Michelle Wie West knows that feeling better than most.

It’s been just over a year since West walked off the 18th green at Pebble Beach, waving goodbye to a career that started off playing against men. She was ready to move. Or in reality, forced to.

It was her body that made the call for her—arthritic wrists, an avulsion fracture, nerve entrapment, bone spurs, you name it. It was a brutal injury list, most of which didn’t come from tournament play. Since her teenage days, she trained like a maniac, pounding drivers until her hands bled, lifting heavy without enough foundational strength “I was training like a man who was about to play professional sports, which is so different. I was trying power cleans when I was 15. Like why? Why was I ever doing that?”,  she once told the Quiet Please Podcast.

Her final LPGA round was at the 2023 US Women’s Open. That day, she was emotional, trying to soak up the crowd, watching their fan-made videos on her journey. But there was a relief that for the first time in her life, golf wouldn’t be the centre of everything.

Or so she thought.

Ask her now, and she’ll tell you that she hasn’t lost the itch. The idea of recording golf scores still terrifies her, but watching her friends lifting trophies ignites a feeling in her. “Yeah, I mean, whether it’s not the itch, I mean, obviously, it’s always there, right? I don’t think that part of you ever goes away,” West recently said at a podcast episode on The Loop.

Does that mean she’s planning a comeback? Not exactly. It seems like Michelle Wie West has finally healed her relationship with golf. For someone who broke herself through overtraining, she is now scratching that same competitive itch through training again. “I recently ran a half-marathon, and training for that kind of scratched the itch a little bit…You can work out for fun, you know, but there’s nothing like training for something that you’re so passionate about.

It’s a good feeling to watch someone heal themselves. Because this is the same West who, a few days back, through an Instagram post, said she’s happy to leave the sport that gave her the name.

Needless to say, golf is still in her bloodstream. But now, her leaderboard looks different.

Michelle Wie West’s new game off the course

Since retiring, Michelle Wie West spends more of her time in boardrooms and startup ventures rather than at fairways and greens of a course. Her portfolio now rocks several brand names, such as Sportsbox.AI and LA Golf. For the former, she is an advisor for their 3D tech, incorporating her golf expertise in advancing sports science. And for the latter, she’s on the board for next-gen equipment design.

One of her most public ventures is Togethxr, the media and apparel brand co-founded by Alex Morgan, Sue Bird, and others. West joined as their first athlete-investor with a mission to amplify women’s sports and push their “Everyone Watches Women’s Sports” campaign.

“I’ve spent my whole life trying to prove that I belonged in rooms that weren’t built for women…So when I saw TOGETHXR  I thought, this is the future,” she told Forbes.

Off the investment track, she hosts “Driven with Michelle Wie West“, a video series, an idea inspired by her own life, where she asks elite athletes how they channel their drive into life after sport. And then there is Mizuho Americas Open, an LPGA tournament which is hosted by West, who is also the brand ambassador. The event is distinctive for its elevated prize purse and a mentorship-driven format, where top LPGA pros compete alongside elite junior female golfers.

It’s clear that Michelle Wie West hasn’t slowed down; she’s just shifted her game.