Canadian karma set to spark Ko

World No1 golfer Lydia Ko is hoping her love affair with Canada can reignite her game as three majors loom.

After taking a week off to freshen up, the Kiwi rejoins the LPGA tour for the Manulife Classic at the Whistle Bear club in Cambridge, Ontario.

The year’s second major, the KPMG Women’s PGA Classic in New York, is played next week and the US Open and British Open follow quickly.

Ko, after uncharacteristic finishes of 41st and 16th in her two previous tournaments, is desperate to get into the groove as she looks to break her majors duck.

The comfort factor of Canada, where she has twice won the Canadian Open, is helping her confidence ahead of her return to the tee (5.32am Friday, NZ time).

‘‘I feel like Canada’s really one of the closest countries to New Zealand. I mean, it’s so far away, I never really get to go back home. So when I come back here, the fans are great and I feel, like I said, like I’m at home and just the whole environment, it’s very welcoming,’’ Ko said.

‘‘Obviously my first LPGA win was in Canada, in Vancouver. When you know that there are so many special memories made at a certain place, it’s always exciting to come back.

‘‘Canada was really one of the countries that I felt like, hey, this could be home.’’

Ko said she had hoped she could lie by the pool ‘‘fixing my golf tan’’ during her break. Instead she had slept, worked on her university assignments, watched golf on TV and also put time into practice as well as visiting the courses for the ensuing majors in the US.

Ko’s assignments for her psychology papers involved selfanalysis. ‘‘Yeah, a case study of Lydia Ko by Lydia Ko,’’ she said. ‘‘You know, like kind of go back through the last couple years and I had to explain like the mental side.

‘‘It’s really cool because I had to kind of go back on that journey again, and when you’re like playing you kind of stay in the present and you kind of look forward to what’s coming up next, but to go back and see the past is really cool.’’

She has identified a couple of key areas for this crucial stretch.

‘‘When I see the weeks that I won or I had top 10s, I was having a good ball-striking week and then the crucial putts were going in.

‘‘You can’t make all putts, but when you know that the putts that kind of need to drop, drop, that’s when it really counts. The last couple weeks putts were close but not in, so hopefully it will start again this week.’’