She was 14 years old when, in 2012, she became the youngest amateur to win a professional tournament, in the ALPG Tour (Australian Ladies Professional Golf). Now, at 17 years old and already a professional, she is number three in the world. Lydia Ko is certainly not just any teenager.
Born in South Korea and raised in New Zealand, where she is a citizen, Ko turned professional at the age of 16 after leading the world amateur ranking for 130 weeks and winning no less than four professional tournaments with amateur status! In April 2012, at the age of 15 years and four months, she became the youngest to win a tournament on the American Women’s Tour (LPGA Tour) and in August 2013 she broke the mold again by being the only amateur to have triumphed in two events on the aforementioned circuit (CN Canadian Women’s Open). She did not make the cut in any of the 25 professional tournaments she played as an amateur.
She also won as an amateur a European Women’s Tour tournament (New Zealand Women’s Open) in February 2013.
After his second place finish at The Evian Championship of the Grand Slam in October 2013, he decided it was time to turn professional.
Professional at 16
In November 2013, at the age of 16 and having been admitted to the LPGA Tour despite being a minor, she played her first tournament as a professional on that circuit. She finished 21st. “It’s not often that the LPGA welcomes a rookie who has already been a two-time champion on this Tour,” said commissioner Mike Whan when Ko’s request to join the world’s best women’s tour was granted.
In April 2014 Lydia won her first LPGA Tour tournament (Swinging Skirts LPGA Classic) as a professional and her first on U.S. soil. Just the day she lifted that trophy she celebrated her seventeenth birthday. In April she won her second victory (Marathon Classic), and in November she crowned her exceptional year with victory in the last tournament of the season (CME Group Tour Championship), beating the Spanish Carlota Ciganda on the fourth hole of the playoff and pocketing half a million dollars.
With those credentials, there was no doubt who would be named Rookie of the Year: Ko.
In the 26 tournaments she has played in 2014 on the LPGA Tour, she has three wins, two second places and three third places. She has 15 top-10 finishes and has not missed a cut. She has been third on the earnings list, with just over two million dollars, and her average score per round has been 70.08 strokes, the fifth best of the season. She is number three in the world ranking, only preceded by Stacy Lewis, who leads it, and Inbee Park.
In her forays into the Grand Slam, apart from her extraordinary second place at the Evian when she was still an amateur in 2013, her best result has been a third place at the last LPGA Championship.
Lydia was introduced to golf at the age of five when her mother took her to a club in Auckland owned by professional Guy Wilson, who would be her coach until a year ago, when he was replaced by British David Leadbetter, also Michelle Wie’s coach.
Wilson, very disappointed with his pupil’s decision, recalled that when he first met her the golf clubs were too big for her and she didn’t know what a driver or putter was, “but now she has one of the best swings on the LPGA Tour”.
Among the most influential
Last April Ko, who has signed a contract with the powerful representation agency IMG, was named by Times magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.
Annika Sorenstam, the greatest golfer of the past two decades, an eight-time LPGA Tour Player of the Year, has said of Lydia that she is exceptionally talented and very mature for her age and well liked by both her rivals and golf fans. “She is responsible for the growing interest in our sport not only in her homeland of South Korea and adopted New Zealand, but also among young women around the world.”
Lydia’s greatest passion, apart from golf, is cooking, and if she were not a golfer, she would like to work in media, especially television. Her only confessed superstition is to keep using the same ball marker if she does well on the green. Her hobbies include going to the movies, reading and playing tennis. A very normal girl… off the golf course. In there she is something else… very serious.
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