By steve eubanks
In hindsight there was no doubt, although, like the back-and-forth of a final round, the outcome wasn’t evident until the end. In looking at Lydia Ko’s 2022 season, it’s easy to say, “Of course, she’s Player of the Year. How could anyone think otherwise? Her comeback might be the Story of the Decade, a roar for the ’20s.â€
But that assessment, as accurate as it is in December, wasn’t self-evident until the final few weeks, long after the PGA Tour had crowned its season-ending champions. Once fall leaves turned a golden hue, the only real drama in the game was on the LPGA Tour, where most of the season-ending awards remained up in the air until the final putt fell in mid-November.
That’s when people took a backward glance and said, “Wait a minute. Lydia had a year for the ages. How could this have been in doubt?â€
The answer lies in our willingness to extrapolate current moments into some infinite future, to believe that what’s happening today will continue into perpetuity. As golfers, we should know better. Three birdies in a row doesn’t mean you’re going to break 80. But for reasons that remain a mystery of the human mind, we believe that a couple of wins and three or four good finishes by a tour player puts him or her on a glidepath to year-end stardom.
Throughout the summer, women’s golf focused on other storylines, including but not limited to the rise of Minjee Lee, who won twice before mid-June. She had a runaway victory at the U.S. Women’s Open and, three weeks later, was one putt away from a playoff in the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship. Lee vaulted up the Rolex Women’s World Golf Rankings and, with eye-popping ball-striking numbers, had everyone predicting an inevitable trip to world No. 1.
That didn’t happen. Lee didn’t crack the top 30 in any event after early August and was fourth in the Rolex Rankings on the first of December.
Once you slow down and have a look, Ko’s numbers are extraordinary. Her scoring average for the year was 68.988, the second-lowest in LPGA history behind Annika Sörenstam, who averaged 68.696 in 2004.
The other shiny new bobble in the women’s game was teenage sensation Atthaya Thitikul. A mere 19, Thitikul arrived on the LPGA Tour already having captured the Player of the Year and Order of Merit on the Ladies European Tour and having set a record as the youngest person in history to win a tour event, at age 14. Winning on the LPGA Tour in just her fifth start turned all eyes in the smiling Thai’s direction. Thitikul won her second LPGA event in September and locked up the Rolex Louise Suggs Rookie of the Year award by the first week of November. A win at the CME Group Tour Championship would have made her only the third player in history to win Rookie of the Year and LPGA Player of the Year in the same season – the other two being Nancy Lopez and Sung Hyun Park – and the youngest ever to accomplish that feat.
In Gee Chun also got a brief glance. The 28-year-old Korean had the round of the year when she shot 64 at Congressional in a cold and rainy opening round en route to winning the Women’s PGA. No other single-day performance comes close. Chun made a run at Player of the Year when, after already capturing one major, she battled her way into a playoff at the AIG Women’s Open at Muirfield. Had she prevailed over Ashleigh Buhai, it would have been hard to say that a two-time major winner didn’t deserve a nod. But Buhai’s bunker shot at Muirfield’s famous 18th put Chun’s run to rest.
That left Ko, who went through much of the year overlooked. Part of that was geography, and part was the calendar. Ko’s three victories in 2022 came when few people pay attention to golf. She won the second event of the year – the Gainbridge LPGA at Boca Rio – in the last week of January, when snow blanketed much of North America and Great Britain. Her next win came at the BMW Ladies Championship in South Korea in October, after the majors were complete and when sports fans had turned their attention to both kinds of football.
It wasn’t until the last event of the LPGA Tour season, in Naples, Florida, during the week before American Thanksgiving, that people looked at what Ko had accomplished and said, “Wait, what?†Her victory in that finale not only locked up the Rolex LPGA Player of the Year award, it earned Ko the Vare Trophy for low stroke average, the money title, and left her just two points shy of becoming the youngest player in history to qualify for the LPGA Hall of Fame.
A week after that, she returned to No. 1 in the world for the first time since 2017, setting a record for the longest gap between trips to the top spot in the Rolex Rankings: 5 years, 5 months and 17 days.
Once you slow down and have a look, Ko’s numbers are extraordinary. Her scoring average for the year was 68.988, the second-lowest in LPGA history behind Annika Sörenstam, who averaged 68.696 in 2004. They are the only two players to break 69 for a season.
Ko also led the tour in bogey-free rounds, with 17. She had 14 total top-10 finishes. which led the tour in top-10 percentages (63.6). And in her last 10 starts of 2022, she won as many times (two) as she was out of the top 10.
From the middle of July until year’s end, she gained an average of 3.12 strokes per round on the field. She ranked fifth on tour during that stretch in strokes gained tee-to-green, fourth in strokes gained approach, and first in strokes gained putting.
Ko led the tour in putts per green hit in regulation (1.72) and sand saves (66.25 percent), and she was third on tour in total birdies (383).
It was, by every measure, one of the great years of recent memory, made more remarkable by how many naysayers had written her off as a has-been at age 25.
She proved all of them wrong. That is why, without objection, Lydia Ko is Global Golf Post’s female professional Player of the Year.
Top: Lydia Ko wraps up the Vare Trophy, the Rolex Player of the Year trophy and the CME Globe trophy.
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