Ko on track to claim all the spoils

It’s only April but Lydia Ko has already breezed past the NZ$1 million mark in LPGA Tour earnings in 2015.

If the Kiwi golfer maintains this pace for the rest of the LPGA Tour season, she will sweep all the spoils.

Two wins and seven top-10s from eight starts has Ko occupying top spot in all the lists that count on the LPGA Tour.

She’s extended her lead in the world rankings, extended her lead in the LPGA Tour’s season-long points race, and now shot to the top of the tour’s money list.

A US$300,000 ($395,000) cheque for winning the Swinging Skirts LPGA Classic in San Francisco on Monday (NZ time) has taken her season earnings to $US908,810 ($1.19 million), which puts her more than $160,000 ahead of South Korean Sei Young Kim.

Kim is also second in the points Kiwi golfer Lydia Ko imitates a ‘‘selfie’’ as she poses with the winner’s trophy after winning the Swinging Skirts LPGA Classic in San Francisco. race, with 1556 points to Ko’s 2005. The world rankings are out on Tuesday but expect Ko to have extended her lead there, too. She will spend a 13th consecutive week at No 1.

And here’s one more number; she has only been a pro for 18 months but Ko has already moved to No 87 on the all-time LPGA Tour prizemoney list, with total earnings of US$3 million.

Of course, winning a major remains the elusive Holy Grail for Ko, but she’s doing a fine job in between those weeks.

She again proved her mettle down the stretch, overcoming a four-shot deficit at one stage to win a two-hole playoff and defend her title at the Swinging Skirts.

As was the case in 2014, the win proved to be the perfect birthday present for Ko, who turned 18 on Saturday local time, as she claimed her second LPGA Tour win of the season, her fifth LPGA Tour win since turning pro, and seventh LPGA Tour victory overall.

Ko trailed American Morgan Pressel by between one and four shots at various times in a topsyturvy back nine at the Lake Merced Golf Club, but made a couple of crucial putts to force her way into a playoff after both finished the 72 holes at eight-under par – Ko after a two-under 70 and Pressel after an even-par 72.

It was the 18-year-old world No 1 who had four LPGA Tour wins in the past 12 months against the 26-year-old world No 33 who became the youngest ever winner of a women’s major at age 17, but hadn’t won on the LPGA Tour for seven years and still only had two wins to her name.

Ko didn’t blink, sinking a fourfoot putt for birdie on the second playoff hole, the par-five 18th. She birdied that hole two of the three times she played it on Monday. Pressel made par all three times.

Despite all the emotion and furore that went with winning, Ko was able to tell a reporter well after the final putt had dropped and the presentations had been made, the exact yardages she had for her third shot into the 18th all three times she played it: ‘‘It was 108 the first time, 111 the next time, it was like 96 the third time.’’

If there was ever a sign Ko is able to block out all the peripheral stuff and concentrate on what matters, that was it. All three yardages were ingrained. Other golfers would have been so overwhelmed they wouldn’t have had a clue.

For all that, Ko admitted to nerves as she needed a birdie at the 72nd hole to have a chance of a playoff.

‘‘I do get nervous. My 17th hole shot at Ocala definitely proves it, doesn’t it? That was a pretty bad shot,’’ she said, clearly still frustrated at blowing victory in Florida back in January with a doublebogey on the penultimate hole.

‘‘I think everybody has nerves. Some people show it; some people don’t. But to me, even just playing a round of golf with club members gets me nervous.’’

Ko started the final round on six-under, three shots behind the leader, Canadian 17-year-old Brooke Henderson, who would eventually fade to finish third, one shot out of the playoff.

It looked as though it wasn’t going to be Ko’s day, either, when she bogeyed the first two holes. She fought back, though, and when she made a huge, curling 45-foot birdie putt at the par-three 15th, sending a roar around the course and dragging a fist-pump out of Ko, it was game on.

Ko hung in despite a fourth bogey of the day, at the 16th, birdied the 18th, and left it in Pressel’s hands. The American could not get the job done.

‘‘You know, sometimes you don’t hit the ball well but you putt great and you end up winning, and vice versa,’’ Ko said, rather philosophically. ‘‘It’s never easy.’’