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Working Wonder
Strong Ethic And Sunny Outlook Separate Ko
BY STEVE EUBANKS
She has all the intangibles of a champion, one who is likely to stick around for a while. Jin Young Ko is patient, persistent and happy, but never content. As she walked off the final green after the final round of the 2019 season, a season in which Ko wrapped up LPGA Player of the Year, the Vare Trophy for low stroke average and the official LPGA money title, the first thing she said was, “I didn’t putt well today so I need to work harder on that.”
Ko had 34 putts that Sunday of the CME Group Tour Championship and averaged 31 putts a day for the week – not bad, especially when you consider that she hit 63 of 72 greens. In fact it was good enough for Ko to finish tied for 11th. But the greats always have a streak of perfectionism in them, a need to scratch that one last niggling itch before they walk away.
Ko could have, and by all rights should have been dancing on rainbows at the end of 2019. Not only did she sweep the LPGA awards, her year-long stroke average of 69.062 was the second lowest in LPGA Tour history behind Annika Sörenstam’s 2002 record of 68.697. Ko also hit 79.56 percent of her greens in regulation, the highest mark in tour history, and went a stretch in the summer where she played 114 consecutive holes without a bogey, the longest known bogey-free streak in professional golf history, surpassing the run of 110 set by Tiger Woods in 2000. She won the Rolex Annika Major Award after winning two major championships, the ANA Inspiration and the Evian Championship, and became just the fifth player in LPGA history to win Player of the Year the season after winning Rookie of the Year. Ko also became the second player after Ariya Jutanugarn to sweep all major awards along with the money title while ranked No. 1 in the world.
To understand how a 24-year-old South Korean in only her second year on tour could reach such heights, you have to go back to the ANA Inspiration in early April. On that Saturday, Ko shot 68 and led by a stroke. Hours after play concluded, when the volunteers were grilling burgers and hot dogs on the patio behind the clubhouse and the sun had dipped below the San Jacinto mountains, maintenance workers attempting to mow the putting green had to dodge one player, the only one left on the premises: Jin Young Ko.
Sunday, she won by three.
Something similar happened in Évian-les-Bains, France, where she came from four shots back to capture her second major. The range is far enough from the course at Evian Resort Golf Club that a series of vans transport players back and forth along mountain roads. The last player carted from the practice area to the hotels on Saturday night was the eventual winner.
Her success is no mystery. She outworked everyone else.
“There is no part of her game that jumps out and makes you say, ‘Oh, sure, that’s it, that’s why she’s so good,’ ” past major champion and Golf Channel analyst Karen Stupples said of Ko after the Evian victory. “But if you look at the consistency, the number of fairways she hits, the number of greens she hits, when she makes a few putts you look up and realize she’s put together another great week.”
Ko had a total of four victories in 2019, an early one at the Bank of Hope Founders Cup, two weeks before capturing the ANA Inspiration, and the CP Women’s Open a month after Evian. She posted eight other top-10 finishes, including three seconds. Still, she felt there could have been more. “I feel good about the awards,” she said the Sunday the season ended. “But my play today was not good. So I will work harder and more.”
She said it with a smile. There is no bitterness. In fact, in Australia early in the year Ko was asked about her goals for the year. “I want to be happiest player on the course,” she said.
In November she was asked if she’d succeeded in that goal. “Yeah, I did. I’m happy because I’m alive. I want to thank God for being alive.”
She’s not sure about her 2020 schedule, yet. But she will enter the year as the player to watch … and as the Global Golf Post female player of the year.