[IMAGE: Dylan Buell]
Not even a month away from the LPGA slowed down Lydia Ko’s run.
Following a gold medal at the Paris Olympics in July to earn her place in the tour’s vaunted Hall of Fame and Ko’s third career major victory at the AIG Women’s Open last month at StAndrews, the 27-year-old delivered the most consistent performance of her three-win season at the Kroger Queen City Championship.
Ko carded only one bogey all week and hit 51 of 56 fairways as part of a 23-under-par performance, the second-best 72-hole score of her career.
Here’s how she came from two shots behind on Sunday to shoot a bogey-free 63 to collect a commanding five-shot victory at TPC River’s Bend in Maineville, Ohio
Leaderboard
Win: Lydia Ko (-23)
2: Jeeno Thitikul (-18)
3: Haeran Ryu (-17)
4: Yuka Saso (-16)
T-5: Nelly Korda (-14)
T-5: Hyo Joon Jang (-14)
What it means
The victory is the first time since her 2016 peak that Ko won back-to-back starts, winning her third career major last month at the Old Course in the AIG Women’s Open before her triumph this week. Her 22 career titles are increasingly more impressive when compared amongst active players. She is seven ahead of the next two players with the most wins in 15-time champions Jin Young Ko and Yani Tseng, who has not been competitive in recent seasons. World No.1 Nelly Korda is next in line with 14 titles.
The Kiwi’s third title of the year marks the fifth time she has won three or more tournaments in a season on the LPGA, which she also did in 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2022. Ko joins Korda as the only two players with three-plus wins in 2024.
Her $US300,000 winner’s cheque bumps her season total to $2,569,317, the third-most money she has banked in a season.
How it happened
Ko started breaking away from Thitikul around the turn at TPC River’s Bend and never slowed down. Thitikul maintained her two-stroke lead through the first eight holes before her first bogey of the day on the ninth cut her advantage to one. Ko tied the 54-hole leader with a birdie on No.10, then passed Thitikul with an eagle on the par-5 11th to go up by two strokes.
https://twitter.com/LPGA/status/1837913061321064951
Ko’s lead continued expanding throughout the back nine and she was in total control of her game. She hit a smooth hybrid from 189 yards on the 13th to inside five feet for another birdie to take a three-shot lead. Ko missed the fairway on No.15 and knocked her approach to 12 feet for her sixth birdie of the round to go up four with three to play.
The three-time Olympic medalist saved an up-and-down par on the 17th to go up five. Her three-footer for birdie on the last closed out a decisive six-under back nine. It didn’t just appear that Ko made nearly every putt – she only needed 23 strokes to get around the 18 greens on Sunday.
Best of the rest
Nelly Korda (T-5) had the best finish of the 11 Solheim Cup players in the field this week. The American posted four under-par rounds in a tournament for the first time since her sixth victory of the year at the Mizuho Americas Open in May. Albane Valenzuela (T-7) was the other player at Robert Trent Jones Golf Club to finish in the top 10 this week.
Haeran Ryu ended her first start since her FM Championship victory with a flurry of birdies. The 2023 Rookie of the Year winner carded five in a row on Nos. 11-15 as part of a closing 67 for the South Korean’s fifth top-five in her last six starts.
Quotable
“I think I pretty much told myself, ‘hey, I don’t know if this is going to happen, but the things that I didn’t believe in happened these past couple months,’” Ko said. “I struggled a lot during the middle of the season, and I was in a place where, OK, am I really going to be in the Hall of Fame and all of those doubts. I had a fairytale of those past couple months and now I feel like if I set my mind to it, maybe I can do it.”
