There’s so much more to Lydia Ko’s success than the golf which saw her winning the 17th HSBC Women’s World Championship by four shots from Thailand’s Jeeno Thitikul and Japan’s Ayaka Furue, with Charley Hull among those in a tie for fourth place.
Not only does Ko have positive thoughts about her play, but she sees her rivals as friends as opposed to foes. As Sandra Mackenzie from the commentary team said, “You never hear anyone say a bad word about her.” And just as surely, you never hear her say a bad word about the others.
Ko mentioned at the end that she had dreamed of winning, only to wake up at three in the morning and say to herself, “Dang, it’s not real yet.” Where others might have had such a dream interspersed with thoughts of, “I can’t wait to beat so-and-so and so-and-so,” her mind is such that she concentrates on playing her own best game as opposed to worrying about where she is on the leaderboard.
One ahead going into the final round, Ko as good as had the rest beaten when she made three successive birdies on the front nine and bagged another at the 13th.
Some thought that things might get closer when, though she caught the front of the 15th green, the pin was still in a different neighbourhood. Instead, Ko weighed up the putt with the same attention as some conscientious businessman might study his takings, and rolled her 20-yarder into the hole.
Ko did have a three-putt green to drop a shot at the short 17th, trimming her lead from five to four. Another dropped shot was possible at the 18th when she caught the right-hand bunker.
She then got down to signing autographs – the autograph hunters usually get a smile as well – and apologized for having kept them waiting.
How she would have hated to finish bogey, bogey in front of a mass of spectators from whom she has had “so much love” over the years. As it was, she ended up holing a 6-footer for them as much as for herself and, not too many minutes later, a series of her sister competitors were drowning her in champagne. At 27, Ko was the youngest player ever to have arrived at 23 LPGA victories.
You couldn’t expect the perfect speech to follow such a performance but, apart from the fact that this New Zealander will have had plenty of practice, she thanked all the right people and she meant every word.
What an amazing example Ko sets to golfers everywhere.
Jeeno Thitikul, who had no energy at the start of the week, was pleased to have finished as well-placed as second, putting it down to some sachets of “Bubble Tea.” Japan’s Furue, for her part, managed a relatively positive, “Without my best stuff, I was still able to manage a top 10.”
For a couple more Ko statistics, she was 30 yards shorter than Thitikul and Hull, while she has completed comfortably more than 600 press conferences since 2012 when she played in her first U.S. Women's Open as a 15-year-old amateur. Twenty-eight amateurs had teed off that week and Ko, when quizzed, wanted to make the point that being an amateur didn’t mean that you weren’t any good. “Sometimes it’s just age that’s stopping us.”
On Sunday, she reiterated that she was not trying to prove anything following that extraordinary ’24 season which finished with her taking her place in the LPGA Hall of Fame. “I did have a great year,” she said, thoughtfully, “and maybe I can have an even better one.”
Lewine Mair