<\/p>\n
She was just 14 years old when, in 2012, she became the youngest amateur to win a professional tournament \u2013 on the Australian Ladies Professional Golf Tour. Now 17 and having turned professional, she is third in the world rankings. Lydia Ko is certainly not just any teenager. <\/p>\n
Born in South Korea and raised in New Zealand, where she holds her current nationality, Ko turned pro at 16 after having led the amateur rankings for 130 weeks and won no fewer than four professional tournaments while still in the unpaid ranks. In April 2012, aged 15 years and four months, she became the youngest winner on the US LPGA Tour and in August 2013 she set another record as the only amateur to have won twice on that same tour (CN Canadian Women\u2019s Open). She did not miss a cut in 25 professional events when playing as an amateur. She also was victorious as an amateur on the Ladies European Tour, winning the New Zealand Women\u2019s Open in February 2013. <\/p>\n
After her second place in the Evian Championship (a Grand Slam event) in October 2013, she decided the moment had arrived to turn pro.<\/p>\n
\n
Professional at 16<\/strong><\/p>\n In November 2013, having been accepted as an LPGA Tour member in spite of still being under-age (16), she competed in her first event on that tour as a pro \u2013 and finished 21st. \u201cIt\u2019s not often the LPGA welcomes a rookie who is already a dual champion on this tour,\u201d said the commissioner, Mike Whan, accepting Ko\u2019s application to become a member of the world\u2019s leading women\u2019s golf circuit. <\/p>\n In April 2014, Lydia won her first LPGA event as a pro and her first on US soil (Swinging Skirts LPGA Classic). She turned 17 on the same day she triumphantly raised the trophy. She would win a second title in April (Marathon Classic) and in November capped an exceptional year with victory in the final tournament of the season (CME Group Tour Championship), defeating Spain\u2019s Carlota Ciganda on the fourth extra hole of sudden-death and collecting a half-million-dollar prize. <\/p>\n With those credentials there was no doubt who would be named Rookie of the Year: Ko.<\/p>\n In the 26 tournaments she competed in last year on the LPGA Tour Ko collected three wins, two runner-up finishes and three third-places. She totalled 15 top-10 finishes and did not miss any cuts. She was third on the money list, with over two million dollars in winnings, and her average round was 70.08 strokes, fifth best for the season. She is currently number three in the world, after leader Stacy Lewis and Inbee Park. <\/p>\n In Grand Slam appearances, apart from her extraordinary second place while still an amateur in the 2013 Evian, her best result has been third in last year\u2019s LPGA Championship.<\/p>\n Lydia started playing golf at five when her mother took her to a club in Auckland owned by the professional Guy Wilson, who would become her coach until a year ago, when she replaced him with David Leadbetter \u2013 also coach of Michelle Wie.<\/p>\n Extremely disappointed with his student\u2019s decision, Wilson recalled that when he first knew Ko her golf clubs were too big for her and she didn\u2019t know what a driver or putter was, \u201cbut now she has one of the best swings on the LPGA Tour\u201d.<\/p>\n \n Globally influential<\/strong><\/p>\n Last April Ko, who has signed a contract with the powerful IMG management agency, was named by Times magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.<\/p>\n Annika Sorenstam, the finest women\u2019s golfer over the past few decades (eight times Player of the Year on the LPGA Tour), has observed that Lydia has an exceptional talent and is extremely mature for her age, as well as being very well liked by both her rivals and her fans. \u201cShe is responsible for the growing interest in our sport, not only in her homeland South Korea and adoptive New Zealand but also among youngsters throughout the world.\u201d <\/p>\n Lydia\u2019s main passion, apart from golf, is cooking and \u2013 if not a golfer \u2013 she would have liked to work in the media, especially TV. Her only self-confessed superstition is to use the same ball marker if things work out well on the green. Her hobbies include going to the cinema, reading and playing tennis. A very normal girl\u2026 away from the golf course. On the course it\u2019s a different matter! <\/p>\n \n Ko\u2019s reflections<\/strong><\/p>\n If I make a bogey or three putt I\u2019m on fire inside. But it\u2019s not like you\u2019re going to play any better slamming your club or getting angry. So you might as well just keep it in. People say I\u2019m pretty calm, but I do make mistakes and I do get angry, but I try and not show it. <\/p>\n I\u2019d love to go out on a Saturday night with my friends and watch a movie, but that happens really like once a year or a couple of times.<\/span><\/p>\n Everyone gets surprised because neither one of my parents play golf. Like I said in my speech, my aunt and uncle really love golf, and we visited them, and she gave me two clubs. Like people think when they don\u2019t know who my dad is, they think he\u2019s my coach. <\/span><\/p>\n Two weeks ago at the U.S. Amateur, my mom caddied, and that is kind of a different feeling, because she\u2019s your mom and you have to listen to her. It was really comfortable having my mom there, but it\u2019s also really relieving and comfortable to have someone that knows the course off their hat, really. <\/span><\/p>\n Golf is like 99.9 percent of my life, and then there\u2019s school. I don\u2019t get much time to go out with my friends. <\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s never easy playing 36 holes when you are concentrating so much for all the shots.<\/p>\n A 3-foot putt can be more nerve-racking than a 9-foot putt because a 3-foot putt you should be getting in. A 9-footer, there\u2019s a chance it won\u2019t go in.<\/span><\/p>\n I can\u2019t say I\u2019m not nervous at all with media and doing speeches, but I\u2019m getting used to it and better at it, hopefully.<\/p>\n I have always wanted a dog, but we don\u2019t have anyone to care for it.<\/p>\n Before, I was like \u2018Oh my God, I have to do this media, this media and this media,\u2019 but now I\u2019ve learned these are stages you need to go through. If you play really good golf, you\u2019re going to get more media attention and more interest in you, and you\u2019ll get more confident handling it. <\/p>\n I\u2019ve got a golf scholarship for school, so they understand if I\u2019m away. A couple of years ago they called to see why I wasn\u2019t at school, and now they\u2019re like, \u2018oh, she\u2019s at golf.\u2019 Sometimes I\u2019m in class and sometimes the teachers don\u2019t realize I\u2019m there. She goes, \u2018oh, Lydia\u2019s absent.\u2019 And I\u2019m like \u2018no, actually, I\u2019m here.\u2019 <\/p>\n One of my goals is to play the Olympics in 2016. If you\u2019re able to represent your country in the Olympics everyone will understand you as a player and not many people do get to go to the Olympics. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the 26 tournaments she competed in last year on the LPGA Tour Ko collected three wins, two runner-up finishes and three third-places. She totalled 15 top-10 finishes and did not miss any cuts. She was third on the money list, with over two million dollars in winnings, and her average round was 70.08 strokes, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":4027,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-noticias-generales"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21212\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/div>\n