Inside Lydia Ko’s tearful journey to Olympic glory and the Hall of Fame

SAINT-QUENTIN-EN-YVELINES, France — Lydia Ko was crying in resort rooms. Frequently, too. Whenever she’d get house from a disappointing spherical, tears had been certain to comply with. When she’d kick off a event with a 65 and comply with it with a 72. When she was ranked tenth in the world and taking part in like a hundred and tenth, pondering to herself, What’s going to be at the finish of this tunnel?

But this wasn’t 15-year-old Ko, a inexperienced LPGA rookie. It wasn’t 22-year-old Ko, battling her first wave of profession struggles. It was 26-year-old Ko, simply final yr, at the Staybridge Suites in northwest Arkansas, chasing after the LPGA Hall of Fame. 

The LPGA’s Hall is a unique beast. You don’t get voted in by accumulating first-team awards or by thumping your chest in a group occasion. You earn it with victories. Solo victories. Each win is price a degree — majors are price double — and year-long, singular awards add to your complete. Twenty-seven factors will get you in, 26 doesn’t. (Laura Davies is in the World Golf Hall of Fame, however not the LPGA’s.) All of which places very completed feminine golfers in a difficult place: the nearer you get, the extra everybody is aware of about it and asks about it, the extra tantalizing that checkpoint turns into. It performed with Ko’s thoughts. 

Ko earned her twenty fifth Hall of Fame level after an exciting 2022 season — when three wins elevated her to No. 1 in the world for the first time in years. Then got here 2023 and the worst season of her profession. Between March and September, she missed 4 cuts and had no prime 30s. She’d go to occasions and see photos of her former self holding trophies and it will really feel like a distant reminiscence. The HOF circled in her head. Other LPGA legends would discuss to and commiserate together with her about it.

Seemingly out of nowhere, Ko received the first LPGA occasion of 2024, incomes HOF level No. 26. All she wanted was yet one more valuable level, and it almost occurred every week later. Needing a birdie to win on the closing gap, her strategy shot missed the inexperienced and got here to a cease, oddly, in opposition to a bouquet of 27 white roses the LPGA had introduced out greenside — together with a bottle of champagne — one for every Hall of Fame level. From there, Ko took paradoxical reduction, made par, however misplaced in a playoff to Nelly Korda, who would win each event she’d enter for the subsequent three months. 

Ko was gutted, to use her phrases, however rapidly realized its the phrases of others that drive the level house. Ko was requested about being on the doorstep of the HOF at mainly each event she entered. You might really feel some ache in her solutions early in the yr — Florida was a misplaced alternative. And for somebody who has all the time talked about retiring at age 30, a deadline appeared in the distance. So a lot that Ko started struggling once more. Her mom, Hyeon Bong-sook, and husband, Jun Chung, stepped in.

“I think they made me realize that, hey, even if it doesn’t happen, that’s just my fate,” Ko stated. “I’m going to do my absolute best to keep putting myself in contention and in good position going into the final days, but whether it happens or not, I think there’s a golf God somewhere that controls it.”

That’s when she began scripting.

“If I do win gold at Paris,” Ko stated simply 17 days in the past at the Canadian Open, ”I really feel like any individual wants to get me a Cinderella slipper as a result of it’s only a story that even I couldn’t have drawn up.”

It’s a fairytale not just for the Hall of Fame but additionally for Ko’s Olympics journey. Before this week, she was already the most embellished participant in golf’s younger Olympic lifespan. She received silver in Rio and then took bronze in Tokyo. She’s gotten emotional every time on the medal stand, representing New Zealand. She gave that silver medal to her father, which he retains in a closet of trinkets — every thing from whiskey bottles to memorabilia to Olympic {hardware}. The bronze is together with her sister, in Korea, the place it was on show at their grandmother’s funeral. 

When Ko arrived at Le Golf National, she promised that had been she to add the solely medal she’s lacking, she would demand the others again. She’d filter her trophy room — possibly even make a new trophy room for the Medal Slam (a feat that won’t happen for what, one other 100 years?). It was a enjoyable thought. A enjoyable visible. A enjoyable acknowledgement that in the age of One Shot at a Time, there’s nonetheless room to plan out your desires, regardless of their chance. 

“You say those kind of things and until it really happens, it’s not really factual,” Ko stated. “You know, it’s something that you keep going towards, too.”

She started her third Olympics with an even-par 72 Wednesday earlier than quietly carving out a 67 Thursday, simply making an attempt to preserve tempo with Morgane Metraux’s scorching, eight-under begin. When I requested Ko about the Hall of Fame at the midway level, she punched again with a bit of sarcasm. In quick, this course is simply too laborious to take into consideration the rest, however, “It’s really cool that if I did win the gold, I could get in the Hall of Fame, and it would stop all these questions, like from you, in the future.”

She smiled as a result of she knew the question was coming. The nearer you get, the extra we’re going to speak about it. But when Ko shot 68 Friday to tie for the 54-hole lead, there have been no Hall of Fame q’s. We had been transfixed by her admission that she deleted Instagram off her cellphone for the week — throughout the most Instagrammable sporting occasion on earth — and had drawn inspiration from a Simone Biles documentary. She even wrote a Biles quote in her yardage e book as a reminder:

“I get to write my own ending.”

Conveniently on Saturday, half the contenders started to write the ending for her. At a course setup that rivaled main championships, on which everybody in the subject burdened persistence all week, aggressive pursuits of the podium started backfiring. Hannah Green and Rouning Yin had been staring down bronze once they each hooked tee photographs into water. Miyu Yamashita tied Ko early however then performed Wedge Ping-Pong from reverse sides of the ninth inexperienced. Nelly Korda, making an attempt to comply with Scottie Scheffler together with her personal best-player-in-the-world comeback, made two birdies in her first three holes, however obtained free off the tee and left her medal hopes in the water, too. Le Golf National was reaching out and grabbing gamers. Nary a single scorecard was spared.

Ko walked off the eleventh tee at 11 below and noticed the carnage had constructed her a five-shot lead. But when she doubled 13, her benefit was simply three. And by the time she reached the fifteenth fairway, it was only one. Esther Henseleit was stress-free in the clubhouse, toes up in entrance of a tv, at eight below par. 

Ko’s ending was written not with a pen however with persistence. She labored by nervy three-footers on 15 and 16, all whereas being timed by guidelines officers. Just a few instances, her taking part in companions waited out her putts from the subsequent tee field.

“We practice a lot of [three-footers] when we are training,” Ko stated. It was the final thing she did earlier than teeing off Saturday. “But you don’t realize how important those are until you’re in those kind of circumstances and you have multiple in a row.”

At 17, she backed off a tee shot as spectators raced by above, and then roasted a drive that led to a par. The closing gap at Le Golf National was modified to a par-5 for the ladies, and Ko performed it precisely how you need to with a one-shot lead. Fairway, layup, inexperienced.

When the birdie putt dropped, her hand was already overlaying her mouth. Tears had been already in her eyes. Tears had been a theme of the day, for bronze medalist Xiyu Lin, burying her face in her partner’s shoulder. For Mariajo Uribe, her eyelids swollen after ending her profession with an eagle. And then extra tears for Ko, when she lastly obtained a view from the prime degree of the podium, streamed down her cheek, utilizing her chin as a ramp. When she visited the press tent, she admitted, sure, it’s nice that any additional Hall of Fame questions will probably be alongside the strains of When will we have fun?

“For it to have happened here at the Olympics, unreal,” she stated. “I do feel like I’m a mythical character in a story tale. It really couldn’t have gotten any better than I could have imagined. I’ve had so many grateful things that happened in my career so far, and this really tops it.”

Shortly after Ko provided that perception, she was ushered away to different engagements, photographs, drug-testing, you title it. First, although, she and her group dropped by the Olympics household lounge. Inside was a beautiful shock: 27 white roses that this time she might decide up and maintain.