When Lydia Ko won the U.S. Women’s Amateur a dozen years ago, she told the press that she wanted to play college golf. Her idols at the time were Michelle Wie and Lexi Thompson, but she didn’t want to follow their career paths.
Two weeks later, Ko won on the LPGA as a 15-year-old and that college golf dream went poof. She was too talented for that route. Instead, golf fans watched the bespectacled Ko break records and win hearts as a young teen phenom, making the game look breathlessly easy.
So much life has transpired for Ko since she earned her first LPGA Hall of Fame point in 2012 as a wunderkind. Now married and perhaps on the verge of retirement, Ko played her way into the LPGA Hall of Fame at age 27 in perhaps the coolest way possible – by winning Olympic gold.
While it looked for a while on Saturday at Le Golf National that it would be a runaway victory, the fight for Ko’s 27th Hall of Fame point went down to the wire on what she called the most difficult Olympic test yet. Ko birdied the last in front of a massive crowd to edge Germany’s Esther Henseleit by two strokes. The tears immediately began to fall.
Now a three-time Olympic medalist, having won silver in Rio and bronze in Tokyo, Ko’s podium sweep might not ever be repeated in the modern game.
She becomes the 35th player to qualify for the LPGA Hall of Fame and the first since Inbee Park in 2008. Lorena Ochoa got in two years ago after the tour removed the stipulation that required 10 years on tour, but she reached 27 points in 2008.
How tough is it to get into the LPGA Hall? Consider that legends like Laura Davies, Hollis Stacy, Sandra Palmer and Dottie Pepper aren’t in it.