BELLEAIR — A few miles from where Brittany Lincicome started playing golf, she announced Tuesday afternoon she is retiring from it.

Lincicome is 39 and has two little girls, 5-year-old Emery and 2-year-old Sophia, and wants to spend more time with them.

After a successful and often spectacular 20-year career on the LPGA Tour, Lincicome made the announcement official two days before the first round of The Annika at Pelican Golf Club in Belleair — a few minutes from where she grew up in Seminole and not far from where she now lives in Pasadena.

A few months ago, she said, “I suddenly knew it was time.”

“Earlier in the year I was saying I still feel like I have it and I’m playing great and I feel like I could play another 10 years (on Tour),” Lincicome said. “And then in August (Emery) started kindergarten and I went and volunteered the first two weeks, and I was suddenly that helicopter mom who was shadowing her kid to school every day and volunteering all the time and that was it.

“I saw that I enjoyed that far more than the thought of going to hit golf balls. So I said, ‘OK, that’s my moment. I’m ready to step away.’”

Emotional? You bet.

“There’s going to be tears,” said Lincicome, who for the first time will have her husband, Dewald Gouws, caddying for her. “I don’t know if the tears will come on the first hole, the last hole, in between. I’m sure it will be tough when my parents bring our girls out and they see my mom and dad. … It’s literally a dream come true to be finishing in my backyard, so it’s going to be really cool. … So many things are running through my mind.”

It doesn’t seem that long ago that Lincicome was getting homeschooled so she could manage her practice time as a teenager, building a strong amateur resume along the way.

Then at 19, she jumped into the white hot national spotlight with her prodigious driving prowess (more than 270 yards on average) earning her the nickname, “Bam Bam.”

As an amateur in her first LPGA Tour event, the 2004 U.S. Women’s Open at Orchards Golf Club in Massachusetts, she led after the first round before slipping back to finish 55th.

But her stage had been set.

Later in 2004 she earned her LPGA Tour card while competing in the LPGA Qualifying Series. In 2006, she collected her first victory at the HSBC Women’s World Match Play Championship with her dad, Tom, on the bag. She won again in 2007, a victory that helped Lincicome make her first of six appearances on the U.S. Solheim Cup team.

Overall, she has won eight times on the tour, including two crown jewels.

She won her first major, The 2009 Kraft Nabisco Championship, at age 23 with a dramatic eagle on the 18th hole to beat Cristie Kerr and Kristy McPherson by a stroke.

In 2015, Lincicome won in even more dramatic fashion. She eagled the 18th hole again, then defeated Stacy Lewis in a playoff. Both times she took the traditional plunge into Poppie’s Pond next to the 18th hole with her father.

“So many memories, but yes, now it is time,” Lincicome said. “I know it is.”