Ko rediscovers her inner child

She then hit a 3-wood on the 15th that danced off the clubface. She would have holed the putt for eagle if her ball hadn’t snagged a bit of poa a foot from the hole. Every drive since the 11th was finding the fairway. Ko was hitting every green. Her putting stroke was pure, her eyes and head as still as mountains.

Only she was up against Minjee Lee, the girl who had won the 2012 US Girls at Lake Merced. A roar went up. Lee had holed out of the bunker on the 17th for birdie. Lee also birdied the 18th. Now Ko needed a birdie just to force a playoff.

She scorched another drive (she averaged 258 in the final round, monstrous for her). Her 5-wood came up a few metres short of the green. And then we heard that sound again. No-one else would have dared to clip a floated chip off that lie. The ball was in for eagle. And then at the last minute it veered off. Ko’s caddie, who was looking right down the line, put his hand to his head in disbelief.

Ko had to play the hole again, the first hole of the play-off against Lee. The Aussie from Korea belted her drive 20 metres past Ko. Who cares? Ko was 21. She hit the 3-wood of her life. The ball soared over the branches of an overhanging tree like a freebird. It bounced just short of the green and almost went in for an albatross.

Even then Lee made a gnarly 12-footer for birdie to force Ko to putt out for victory. The 44-tournament drought was over.

But don’t now expect Ko to go on a tear. So far this year every tournament on the LPGA Tour has had a different winner. That’s how much depth there is. But Ko may just have banished the demons of CordeValle. She may just have found her heart again in San Francisco, the city that she loves.