SAINT-QUENTIN-EN-YVELINES, France – Lydia Ko couldn’t hold back the tears when her national anthem began to play. After all the close calls and near misses and bad breaks, she had finally become a gold medalist and earned her place in the LPGA Hall of Fame.
At long last.
“It would be a hell of a way to do it,” said Ko when asked what it would mean to secure a spot in one of sport’s most exclusive Halls of Fame by winning a gold medal on Saturday at the Olympic women’s golf competition. Little did she know that come the end of the final round, that premonition would have become reality, a sweet, sweet dream finally realized for the 27-year-old superstar.
“I repeat those words,” Ko said of becoming a Hall of Famer. “It's a hell of a way to do it. You say those kind of things, and until it happens, it's not really factual. For it to have happened here at the Olympics, unreal. I do feel like I'm a mythical character in a fairytale. It really couldn't have gotten any better than I could have imagined, and I've had so many grateful things that happened in my career so far, and this really tops it. I couldn't have asked for anything more, to be honest.”
Early in the week, it wasn’t immediately apparent that the New Zealander would wind up in this position. She kicked off her bid for the medal trifecta with a quiet, even-par 72, making up some ground on Thursday with a 5-under 67 to sit three back of the lead with 36 holes to play.
A Friday 68 saw Ko share the top of the leaderboard with Switzerland’s Morgane Metraux through three rounds, and when Saturday’s final round got underway, Ko hung tough and held steady as her competitors ran one after one into the buzzsaw that is Le Golf National, with not even a double bogey on the par-4 13th hole derailing her gold medal hopes.
She came to the last with a one-shot lead over eventual silver medalist Esther Henseleit of Germany at 9-under, and like the 20-time LPGA Tour winner has done so many other times before, she calmly found the fairway, laid up, knocked a sand wedge to 7 feet and drained the birdie putt. But this time, it meant so much more.
“Being tied for the lead going into today, I knew that the next 18 holes were going to be some of the most important 18 holes of my life,” Ko said. “One of the things that I had said earlier in the week was I don't know if there is another Olympics for me, and I will say, this is my last Olympics. I think that was at the back of my mind. I didn't want to publicly tell anyone because I knew that being in this kind of position, it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
“I kept telling myself, I get to write my own ending and that Simone Biles had said (that) and I had heard in her documentary. I kept telling myself that, and I wanted to be the one who was going to control my fate and the ending to this week. To have ended this way, it's honestly a dream come true.”
Ko took the silver medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics and claimed bronze after losing in a playoff to silver medalist Mone Inami of Japan at Tokyo 2020, always just a few shots here or a missed putt there from finding the top spot on the Olympic podium. Her quest for gold was something that had continued to propel Ko in her professional golf career, and now that she can finally call herself an Olympic champion, there’s another achievement to add to her laundry list of accomplishments.
The LPGA Hall of Fame didn’t feel within reach for Ko until she won the Hilton Grand Vacations Tournament of Champions in January to earn the 26th of 27 total points she needed for automatic qualification. She nearly got the job done the very next week at the LPGA Drive On Championship, losing in a playoff to Nelly Korda at Bradenton Country Club, a win that Ko was “gutted” by as she knew it would take another monumental effort to win for a 21st time on the LPGA Tour.
Ko then lost her way a bit, finding herself oh-so-close to another victory on numerous occasions, but always coming up just a touch short. The doubts that had plagued her at different points throughout her career began to creep in once again.
Would she get that 27th point? Was the Hall of Fame in the cards? Would she qualify? Could she? Was time running out?
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 seeing the Hall of Fame pressure weigh on her throughout the latter half of the 2023 season and the first portion of this year, Ko seemed a little bit different this week, much calmer about it than she had previously appeared.
“(Lydia) very relaxed all week, very focused,” said Cormack. “The big thing was the Hall of Fame, but then I knew that with the Olympics coming up, there was gold to complete the set. She was just very relaxed and very focused (this week). That’s when she plays her best golf.”
With a whirlwind of Hall-of-Fame and medal-trifecta fanfare swirling around her, Ko kept her cool in the eye of the storm, and to the victor go the spoils, rewards that are twofold for the now the only three-time medalist in the history of Olympic golf.
And while she answered many of the questions she has been asked with her triumph on Saturday, there’s a new one that will be on everyone’s lips in every press conference and interview she does from now until the end of the season: When will she retire?
“I know I'm playing the Scottish Open next week and the (AIG Women’s) Open the week after. There's still so much golf to be played this season,” Ko said. “I have great days and I'm like, ‘I want to play as long as I can,’ and then I have days where I wake up with a sore low back, and I'm like, ‘I don't think I can make it anymore.’
“I don't think there is a specific date, and now that I've got in the Hall of Fame, I don't know if that affects anything. Golf has given me so much, and I know that my ending is sooner than when it first started. So, I wanted to really enjoy it, and while I am competitively playing, I want to play the best golf I can. I think this takes a little bit of weight off my shoulders.”
But that eventuality isn’t on Ko’s mind right now. That’s a tomorrow, next week, next month Lydia problem.
For now, it’s time to soak in this gold-medal moment and celebrate her Hall of Fame qualification with those who love her most.
She might even dry her tears with the ribbon of her gold medal.
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