Hats off to world-conquering Ko
GOLF prodigy Lydia Ko has added yet another feather to her white sponsor’s cap: the title of world No 1. At just 17, she is the youngest person to hold the honour – the previous record-holder was a 21-year-old Tiger Woods.
What’s more, the pole position is merely an extension of her extraordinary form last year – when she won three LPGA Tour events and more than $2 million in prize money.
All in all, it is a staggering record, put together with the kind of metronomic consistency that is beyond most professional sportspeople, let alone the rest of us. (Think, for instance, of New Zealand’s last top golfer, the mercurial Michael Campbell.)
What is the secret to Ko’s success? An unwavering commitment to perfecting her game is part of it. Note that Ko could find no joy in her new ranking immediately after the latest tournament finished – she was too brassed off at having finished second.
Getting started at five years old must have helped too, as it did for Woods, the Williams sisters in tennis, and countless other sporting wunderkinds.
But there is something else about Ko, too, that probably cannot be instilled – a quality of temperament. On the course, she seems unhurried and unflappable, freakishly able to both relax and focus.
Joking about this steadiness, coach David Leadbetter has said: ‘‘We sent her to anger management school to learn how to get angry.’’
Off the course, Ko seems similarly calm, almost languid, while also unusually willing to kid around, perhaps in part because she is still in fact a kid. Think of her whimsical collaboration with All Black Israel Dagg when she turned professional.
That’s very charming, but it’s also useful: commentators at this week’s Florida tournament were most struck by how she was able to collect herself after a rare poor sequence of shots. They called it mental fortitude. It’s surely related to her simple, uninhibited style.
Leadbetter suggests that Ko might spend a long time at the top of the rankings. Here’s hoping – such has been her rise, it’s not hard to see her plugging away like this for years. Yet sport is capricious, golf is a mercilessly psychological game, and Ko is still only a 17-year-old. Anything might happen, and Ko is wise to have been lining up university study on the side recently.
She’s wise, too, to have opted to return to Christchurch later this month for the New Zealand Women’s Open. (Her appearance had been in question as the tournament clashed with an LPGA Tour event.)
Certainly Ko is now an international star who can set her own calendar. As the author Eleanor Catton rightly pointed out recently, the country doesn’t get to own its young stars.
But Ko, like Catton, has also received great public support here, including from taxpayers, and she has made a welcome call by coming back to play.
She’s ensured that everyone wins: the tournament, which would be much weaker without her; the fans, who will surely show up to see such talent; and Ko herself. We already know she’s a phenomenal golfer, but this suggests she’s a generous personality too.