SAINT-QUENTIN-EN-YVELINES, France – Lydia Ko couldn’t hold back her tears as her national anthem played. After all the close calls and near misses and losing streaks, she had finally won a gold medal and earned her place in the LPGA Hall of Fame.
Finally.
“That would be a great way to do it,” Ko said when asked what it would mean to secure a place in one of the sport’s most exclusive halls of fame by winning a gold medal in the women’s Olympic golf competition on Saturday. Little did she know that premonition would become reality at the end of the final round, a sweet, sweet dream finally coming true for the 27-year-old superstar.
“I repeat those words,” Ko said of being inducted into the Hall of Fame. “It’s a great way to achieve this. You say things like that and until it happens, it’s not really true. For it to happen here at the Olympics is unreal. I feel like a mythical figure in a fairy tale. It really couldn’t have been any better than I could have imagined and I’m grateful for so many things that have happened in my career so far and this is really the pinnacle. I honestly couldn’t have asked for anything better.”
It was not immediately clear at the start of the week that the New Zealander would reach this position. She began her attempt at the three medals with a quiet even-par 72 and made up some ground on Thursday with a 5-under-par 67. With 36 holes to go, she is now three strokes behind the leader.
With a score of 68 on Friday, Ko shared the lead in the rankings with Swiss Morgane Metraux for three rounds, and when the final round began on Saturday, Ko held firm as her rivals ran into the Golf National’s buzzsaw one by one. Not even a double bogey on the par-4 13th hole could dash her hopes of the gold medal.
She reached the final match one stroke ahead of eventual silver medalist Esther Henseleit of Germany (9 under par), and as the 20-time LPGA Tour winner has done so many times before, she calmly found the fairway, laid off, hit a sand wedge to 7 feet and sank the birdie putt. But this time, it meant so much more.
“Since I was tied for the lead today, I knew the next 18 holes were going to be some of the most important 18 holes of my life,” Ko said. “One of the things I said earlier in the week was that I don’t know if I’ll ever play in the Olympics again, and I would say this is my last Olympics. I think that was in the back of my mind. I didn’t want to say it publicly to anyone because I knew it was a once in a lifetime opportunity to be in this position.
“I kept telling myself that I could write my own ending and that Simone Biles said (that) and that I heard it in her documentary. I kept telling myself that and I wanted to be the one who would control my destiny and the ending of that week. For it to end like that is honestly a dream come true.”
Ko won the silver medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics and took bronze at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics after losing in a playoff to silver medalist Mone Inami of Japan, always missing a few shots here or a missed putt there from reaching the top spot on the Olympic podium. Her pursuit of gold has been something that Ko has always driven throughout her professional golf career, and now that she can finally call herself an Olympic champion, there is another achievement to add to her long list of accomplishments.
The LPGA Hall of Fame seemed out of reach for Ko until she won the Hilton Grand Vacations Tournament of Champions in January, earning the 26th of 27 points she needed for automatic qualification. She nearly made it the following week at the LPGA Drive On Championship, losing in a playoff to Nelly Korda at Bradenton Country Club. Ko was “disappointed” with the win, knowing she would need another tremendous effort to win for the 21st time on the LPGA Tour.
Ko then lost her bearings a little and came close to winning again several times, but she always fell just short. The doubts that had plagued her at various points in her career began to grow again.
Would she get the 27th point? Was the Hall of Fame in sight? Would she qualify? Could she qualify? Was she running out of time?
Paul Cormack, Ko’s caddie, knew his player’s goals when he picked up her bag at last year’s CPKC Women’s Open. After facing the pressure of the Hall of Fame during the second half of the 2023 season and the first part of this year, Ko seemed a little different this week, much more relaxed than before.
“(Lydia) was very relaxed and very focused all week,” Cormack said. “The most important thing was the Hall of Fame, but then I knew the Olympics were coming up and there was gold to complete the set. She was just very relaxed (this week) and very focused. That’s when she plays her best golf.”
A whirlwind of Hall of Fame and medal trifecta fanfare raged around her, but Ko kept her cool in the eye of the storm, and to the victor go the spoils, a double reward for what is now the only three-time medalist in Olympic golf history.
While her triumph on Saturday answered many of the questions she had been asked, there is a new question that will be on our lips at every press conference and interview she gives from now until the end of the season: When will she retire?
“I know I’m playing the Scottish Open next week and the week after that the (AIG Women’s) Open. There’s so much golf left to play this season,” Ko said. “I have great days and I think, ‘I want to play as long as I can,’ and then there are days when I wake up with a sore back and think, ‘I don’t think I can do this anymore.'”
“I don’t think there’s a specific date, and now that I’m in the Hall of Fame, I don’t know if that has any impact. Golf has given me so much, and I know my end is coming sooner than it started. So I really wanted to enjoy it, and while I’m playing competitively, I want to play the best golf I can. I think that takes a little weight off my shoulders.”
But Ko isn’t thinking about that possibility at the moment. That’s a Lydia problem for tomorrow, next week, next month.
Now it’s time to enjoy this gold medal moment and celebrate her induction into the Hall of Fame with her loved ones.
Maybe she’ll even dry her tears with the ribbon of her gold medal.
