LOS ANGELES —
Lydia Ko of New Zealand was strolling the beach at
Santa Monica, California, on Sunday when she said she was bitten by a sea gull
that swooped in and stole the sandwich in her hand. All Ko could do was laugh.
Her return to the top 10 in
the women’s world golf rankings after more than
three years of absence has much to do with her making peace with her ability to
control only so much when she is in the sand.
اضافة اعلان
Or on the fairway.
The day before, Ko, a former world Number 1, had ended a
three-year title drought at the Lotte Championship in Hawaii, cruising to a
seven-stroke victory fueled by her belief that the outcome was largely out of
her hands.
For Ko, who at 17 became the youngest player, male or female, to
reach No. 1 and had 14
Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) wins before she turned 20, the expectations had become a
burden that she could no longer comfortably shoulder. So she recently decided
to release them to the winds of fate, telling herself “the winner’s already
chosen.”
The mantra has freed her to play the best golf she’s capable of
instead of expending all her physical and psychic energies on manufacturing
success. The results have made her 2021 feel like 2015. Going into this week’s
LA Open, the seventh-ranked Ko is 38-under in her past five competitive rounds
and has 16 subpar scores in 20 competitive rounds this year.
“It takes a little pressure off to think that what’s meant to be
is going to happen,” Ko said Tuesday. “At the end of the day, you don’t control
your outcome even though you would like to.”
Ko, who turns 24 on Saturday, never went away, and yet her
presence on the first page of leaderboards this year has the feel of a much
beloved show returning after an interminable hiatus. After her pro-am Tuesday,
Ko was stopped by every player or caddie she passed as she made the serpentine
walk through a narrow tunnel and up a hill from the ninth hole to the practice
putting green.
Everybody had congratulations and kind words for Ko, who has
been one of the more popular players on the tour since she burst onto the golf
scene.
In 2012, as a 15-year-old amateur, Ko became the youngest winner
of an LPGA event, topping a field at the Canadian Women’s Open that included 48
of the top 50 of the year’s leading money winners. She won the event again
before turning pro at 16. The LPGA waived its 18-year-old minimum age
restriction to grant her membership and Ko continued her rocket ascent. She won
her first event as a professional, won Rookie of the Year honors, and won and
won and won.
She was so consistent, she made the cut in her first 53 LPGA
events. She was in such command of her game, she won two majors and an Olympic
silver medal before her 20th birthday.
But then the unimaginable happened: Ko stopped winning. Not only
did the victories dry up, but Ko struggled to advance to the weekend. In the 12
months before the coronavirus pandemic shut down the tour, Ko missed four cuts,
including one by seven strokes at the Evian Championship, one of the five women’s
golf majors.
Ko’s swing went south, but her smile never did, though at times
both seemed equally mechanical. During her slump, Ko cycled through a series of
swing coaches. One, David Leadbetter, who was fired at the end of 2016, was
vocal in his belief that Ko’s biggest impediment to success was her
overreliance on her parents. He told anyone who asked that she needed to take
control of her career if she wanted to turn around her results.
Last year, at the start of the pandemic, Ko made a pivotal phone
call to Sean Foley, an instructor based in Orlando, Florida, where she lives.
His clients have included
Tiger Woods.
“I just felt like my swing was improving but I could do a little
better,” said Ko, who began working with Foley during the months when the tour
was shut down but the courses in Orlando remained accessible.
Foley’s interest in his clients extends beyond the swing plane,
and his whole-person philosophy clicked with Ko. More than any adjustment he
has made to her swing, Foley has helped Ko sync her mind and her body.
He reminded her that she can control only her effort, not the
outcome. In the second event after the tour resumed last summer, Ko held a
five-stroke lead with six holes to play. She took a one-stroke lead over a
charging Danielle Kang into the final hole, a par-5, and made bogey to finish
second. Just a bad day at the office, Foley told her. No big deal.
Entering the final round in Hawaii with a one-stroke lead over
Nelly Korda, whom she had finished second behind at the Gainbridge LPGA in
February, she retrieved one final text from Foley before she teed off. It read:
Trust and conviction.
She wrote the words on her yardage book, then went out and
played that way, closing with a 65 to clinch her first victory in 1,084 days.
“I think that settled some of the doubts I had in myself,” Ko
said Tuesday, adding: “I felt pretty calm playing. That’s where I feel like it
should be. Like just because I shoot a 68 or 78, that shouldn’t dictate my mood
and the way I am around the golf course.”
Ko considered the win as much a validation of her parents, and
their approach, as of her and her game. “For them to get criticism I thought
was unfair because they’re just doing everything they can to wish me to be
happier,” she said.
Foley’s work with Ko is focused on finding that happiness, win
or lose. For all her precocity — perhaps because of it — Ko had skipped over
that lesson. She had to learn it the hard way.
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