Ko’s career a knockout on LPGA circuit

What a great career professional golfer Lydia Ko has enjoyed. And while her career may be winding down, fans of the Ladies’ Professional Golfers’ Association are hoping that Ko’s stated plan to retire three years from now at age 30 gets postponed.

Ko was an amateur, at age 15 no less, when she won the Canadian Open, a regular LPGA event, at Edmonton’s Royal Mayfair Golf Club in 2012. Just to prove it wasn’t a fluke, the New Zealander won the Canadian Open the next year, at age 16, at the Vancouver Golf Club. Needless to say, she was ready for the professional ranks.

And what a great career! Twenty-one LPGA wins, three of them majors. Three medals in three trips to the Olympic Games, including a gold this year. That Olympic victory in Paris not only gave her the gold medal, but it was the one final point she needed to earn Hall of Fame status. The LPGA’s Hall of Fame criteria is based on a point system — one point for each tournament win; two points for a major; one point for an Olympic gold. The win in Paris put her over the top, and then she went out and won the season’s final major, the AIG Women’s Open at the home of golf, St. Andrews, two weeks later..

“My mom says I played better golf when I was 15 than I do now,” said Ko with a chuckle during a post-AIG interview.

Golf writer Ron Sirak says Ko has had three distinct acts in her career — the kiddie run when she won two Canadian Opens and 11 other titles before turning 20; a bit of a downturn between 2018 and 2021 when she won only once; and then a five-win rejuvenation starting in 2022,

“I think we’re going to see a burst of golf from her like we saw in her teenage years,” said Sirak.

Ko is 27 and was married two years ago. She hasn’t publicly said that motherhood is in her future, but announcing that she would retire at 30 leaves the presumption that the next phase of her life beckons. Former World No. 1 golfers Annika Sorenstam (age 38) and Lorena Ochoa (28) both retired at relatively early ages for family reasons.

Ko said the three weeks that included the Olympics and the AIG major at St. Andrews was like a “whirlwind.”

“It was crazy to get into the Hall of Fame by winning the gold. These are things that I could have never imagined because they were just too good to be true. To say, ‘Oh, like what are the odds that that’s going to happen at the Olympics, and then a couple weeks later I’m going to win the AIG Women’s Open,’ I would have thought somebody was messing with me. But here I am, and it’s just been unreal. I feel very fortunate.”

Golf fans have been fortunate to watch her in action for the past 12 years. Will she give us a few more?

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