Déjà vu for prodigy at the Open
Defending champ leads once again
EDMONTON It’s the kid. Again.
Lydia Ko, the 16-yearold amateur prodigy who shocked the golfing world when she won last year’s CN LPGA Canadian Women’s Open, is once again atop the leaderboard after Thursday’s sun-drenched first round of this week’s renewal at the Royal Mayfair Golf Club.
So much, it would seem, for last year’s win being any kind of a fluke.
Yet, strangely enough, the only person who isn’t sold would seem to be Ko.
“To have that kind of week again this week would be like a double miracle for myself,” Ko said moments after posting an easy 5-under 65 that tied her for the lead with Texas’s Angela Stanford and the Netherlands’ Christel Boeljon.
Cristie Kerr and Paula Creamer were one shot back after a pair of 4-under 66s.
Four golfers finished with 67s, including Ontario’s Jennifer Kirby and World No. 1, Inbee Park.
Ko said she did feel some pressure.
“Not from others, but from myself thinking because you’re the defending champion people are going to expect more and I’m going to expect more from myself.
“I called my dad a couple days ago, and he said, ‘just relax. You can’t control everything, and just play the game that you want to play and that you planned.’”
Ko, who was the youngest player to ever win an LPGA event when she took last year’s CN Canadian Women’s Open when it was held just outside of Vancouver, had it to 6 under going into the 16th hole. After hitting her short approach to eight feet, it looked like Ko was going to make her seventh birdie of the day. Instead, inexplicably, Ko three-putted and made bogey. On the lightning-fast greens, Ko’s first putt ran past the hole by three feet and she missed that one, too.
With the exception of that hole, Ko, a South Korean-born New Zealander, was flawless as she hit 12 of 14 fairways and 14 of 18 greens in regulation. With Royal Mayfair member Bruce MacMillan as her caddy, Ko opened with a birdie and then went par-birdie-par-birdie-par-birdie through the first seven holes.
Other than a tap-in, four on the par-5 third hole, all six of KO’s birdies were from about 10 to 15 feet.
“Most of them were just reasonable distances. (They) weren’t extremely long or extremely short,” said Ko, who arrived in Edmonton more than a week ago to get ready for this $2-million tournament.
“Because I got to play (Royal Mayfair) a couple times more than the other players, I was able to obviously get a better feel for the course ... It was really good to see the course like a week ago,” said Ko, who not only was the youngest winner of an LPGA event, she was also the first amateur to win an LPGA event since Joanne Carner in 1969.
As well as those two feats, Ko was also the youngest person to win a professional golf event when she took the Bing Lee/Samsung women’s New South Wales Open at age 14 in 2011.
Boeljon easily posted the day’s best finishing charge. Coming out of nowhere late in the day, Boeljon came down the stretch with a birdie on No. 15, a hole-in-one eagle on No. 16, another birdie on No. 17 and then a superb, sand save on No. 18.