ORLANDO, FLORIDA | Lydia Ko was put through the complete emotional spin cycle in 2023, filled with tortuous doubts that she might never win again. We are talking about a golfer in her mid-20s, mind you, a great one at that. Golf can have that power.
She figured the tears understandably would flow if she ever won again, which is something that she did on Sunday. They didn’t. Maybe it’s simply that she didn’t have any left.
Asked what she learned about her mighty struggles in 2023, when Ko teed it up in 20 LPGA events and did not come close to winning one, the 26-year-old New Zealander who carries herself with an abundance of grace could only smile.
“I cry a lot,” she said. “I’ve got to get the faucet to stop."
Golf taketh away much more than it giveth. At its core, it is essentially a mean-spirited game, offering rewards at the same pace Ebenezer Scrooge used to hand out pay raises. Go out in your next weekend round with the buddies, birdie the first hole, and know that the golf gods likely will spend the rest of the day gleefully slapping you back down to earth. Whoever decided that the game needed to be 18 holes was downright cruel.
Ko has experienced the many highs and lows of it. All of it. Ko’s victory in the winners-only Hilton Grand Vacations Tournament of Champions at Lake Nona Golf & Country Club, just down the street from where she makes her home, was the 20th of her career, and arrived in her 242nd start. Do the math, and Lydia Ko tees it up and goes down swinging about 90 percent of the time. That might not sound very impressive, but in this game, that makes Ko a prolific winner. She is the seventh youngest to 20 wins, now on the precipice of the LPGA Hall of Fame, perhaps the most exclusive club in all of sports.
“Just like how 2022 was an unbelievable year, and 2023 was a huge question mark, like you can turn it around really quick. Golf is a weird game like that, where you can miss eight cuts and win the next week."
Lydia Ko
With four under-par rounds at Lake Nona, including bogey-free cards in the middle two, Ko was back on top of the hill on Sunday, defeating 19-year-old American Alexa Pano by two shots in the LPGA’s winners-only 2024 season opener. She now has 26 points toward the Hall of Fame (points awarded for wins, majors, player-of-the-year awards, winning the Vare Trophy for scoring, etc.). One more victory and Ko is in.
She likely will take a different approach to it than she did a year ago, when she came off a monster 2022 season (three victories, including the year-end CME) and expected her good play to appear on a continuous loop.
“I think last year I was chasing the hall of fame,” Ko said. “I felt like I could have ... with the way I was playing in 2022 I could back it up with another great year. Look where it put me. I just kept my card, if I hadn't won the year before.
“So, I’m not really going to think about it much. I think we’re all human. Like, to say that it’s not going to linger next time I’m in contention: ‘Oh, my God, if I actually do this I’m going to be in the hall of fame.’ I’m sure that’s going to be one of the gazillion voices in my head.”
Ko got off to a pretty nice start a year ago. She skipped the Tournament of Champions (for her honeymoon), won an LET event in the Middle East and played well in her first LPGA start in Thailand. She was set on cruise control.
In April, though, she missed the cut at Chevron, in the season’s first major, and the result was like a gut punch. She put way too much stock in a single finish, and conceded that she took it much harder than she ever should have. What followed was a downward tailspin that she just could not escape. She kept plunging. Twenty LPGA starts. Only two top 10s.
“I talked to my husband then and he was like, ‘Hey, why are you putting those expectations on yourself?’” Ko said. “In ways I was like, of course I’ve got to put those expectations on myself. I’m not going to go out there feeling like I’m not going to play well.
“At the same time, it’s true. He’s right. I can’t connect my identity to golf all the time and feel like not as good of a person if I don’t shoot a good score. If I’m honestly crying after every single bad round, then that’s just a lot of energy burnt.”
Her result at the TOC was one more reminder how quickly things can flip. Just when you think the tide is out, it turns and comes back in. Take her great 2022, for instance. Ko didn’t like the shape of her game at the TOC, and considered not even going to the next LPGA stop in Boca Raton. She figured she could use the free time at home getting ready to play better when the tour took off for Asia.
But she made the drive to Boca and ended up winning (Gainbridge LPGA). It kicked off one of her best seasons.
As Ferris Bueller once told us, “Life comes at you fast.” Sunday, having secured her 20th LPGA trophy, Ko was on a high again. Maddening game, is it not?
“Just like how 2022 was an unbelievable year,” Ko said Sunday, “and 2023 was a huge question mark, like you can turn it around really quick. Golf is a weird game like that, where you can miss eight cuts and win the next week.
“... So it’s odd. I think there is no right answer for the game of golf. I’m just going to keep working at it.”
The work will continue at the LPGA’s next stop, two hours farther south in Florida this week, in Bradenton. Who knows what Ko’s game might show? She vows to keep her head down, to stay focused, to keep working at it.
It’s the kind of work that just might land her in the LPGA Hall of Fame – hopefully before it drives her mad.
E-MAIL JEFF
Top: Lydia Ko vows she is going to try to stop putting so much pressure on herself.
Julio Aguilar, Getty Images