Lydia Ko in Pursuit of Legacy

“If you’re going to live, leave a legacy. Make a mark on the world that can’t be erased.” - Maya Angelou

Lydia Ko - Olympic Champion

Gold Medal Winner and AIG Women’s Open Champion

I have followed the career of LPGA golfer Lydia Ko since she turned pro as a sixteen-year-old in 2013. Her early years were marked by success after success. She won her first LPGA title as a fifteen-year-old, the first of two as an amateur. She is also the youngest ever to be ranked number one at just seventeen. Lydia Ko was well known in New Zealand as a promising young golfer, competing in the national amateur championship at age seven. Her early successes as an amateur and professional are well documented.

There are ups and downs in life as there are in most endeavors. After the highlight years came lean years, lean by Lydia’s standards. Success still came, but in golf, her form was variable. One year she would be hugely successful as in 2022, the very next year there were no LPGA Tour wins. However, in 2023, she did win the Aramco Saudi Ladies International and another paired with Jason Day in the Grant Thornton Invitational. At her level of achievement, lean is a relative term.

The reasons proffered by all and sundry for the relative drop-off in form ranged from changing a winning coach to a coach of reputation, regular changes of caddies and coaches, to over-reliance on family for decisions as well as having too large an entourage. Keep in mind, the perceived loss of form in less successful years is compared to Lydia Ko’s own high achievements in her early years. Other professionals would happily have a less successful year like Lydia Ko.

Having won the Hilton Grand Vacations Tournament of Champions in January 2024, left her with only one point away from being an inductee into the LPGA Hall of Fame. There were frustrations along the way to getting that extra point. At the very next LPGA tournament, Nelly Korda came from behind playing stunning golf to pip Lydia Ko in a playoff. This started the famous run of five victories in a row for Nelly Korda, creating history with a record that will be hard to match or exceed.

Meantime, Lydia admitted to being in a bit of a slump after the loss to Nelly Korda. She made only one top ten since the loss and was cut twice from tournaments after the second round. Another mini loss of form before the Olympic Games. The gold medal win at the 2024 Paris Olympics gave Ko the extra point needed to become the 35th and youngest inductee at twenty-seven to enter the LPGA Hall of Fame.

Having followed Ko’s career over the years, I always felt she could get the extra point to join other legends in the Hall of Fame. However, given her tendency to have slumps between the highs, knowing when you would get that all-important point, no one, not even Ko herself, could predict when another win and the point would come. After discussing it with her husband and family, Ko herself accepted she may never get the point.

I watched parts of the first three rounds and all the fourth round. Ko began well, maintaining her high position until becoming co-leader at the end of the third. After playing superb golf for the first twelve holes to lead by four, the error occurred on the 13th hole of the very challenging course. Finding the water from such a prime position stunned everyone. It cut her lead by two and then to one after Ester Henseleit birdied the 18th. Pressure and tension mounted. Ko played error-free golf for the remaining holes until she too birdied the 18th to claim the gold medal and that all-important extra point. With three medals from three Olympics and a career for the ages, Ko has created her own history that will be difficult to match or exceed. Speaking after her Olympic win, she said, “It’s a hell of a way to do it.”

After the Olympics triumph and entry into the Hall of Fame, two weeks later Lydia wins her third major, the AIG Women’s Open at the Old Course at St Andrews in incredibly trying conditions.

What a legacy Lydia leaves if she retires now. She has always stated she will retire at age thirty. Whatever she will add to her legacy in the next three years, only the golfing Gods know. Whatever happens, Lydia has absolutely left her mark on the world.

Well done, Lydia Ko, a proud Kiwi of Korean heritage.