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

SAINT-QUENTIN-EN-YVELINES, France — Lydia Ko was crying in lodge rooms. Often, too. Every time she’d get dwelling from a disappointing spherical, tears have been certain to observe. When she’d kick off a event with a 65 and observe it with a 72. When she was ranked tenth on the earth and enjoying like one hundred and tenth, pondering to herself, What’s going to be on the finish of this tunnel?

However 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, on the Staybridge Suites in northwest Arkansas, chasing after the LPGA Corridor of Fame. 

The LPGA’s Corridor is a special beast. You don’t get voted in by accumulating first-team awards or by thumping your chest in a staff occasion. You earn it with victories. Solo victories. Every win is value a degree — majors are value double — and year-long, singular awards add to your whole. Twenty-seven factors will get you in, 26 doesn’t. (Laura Davies is within the World Golf Corridor of Fame, however not the LPGA’s.) All of which places very completed feminine golfers in a tough 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 Corridor of Fame level after an exciting 2022 season — when three wins elevated her to No. 1 on the earth for the primary 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 could really feel like a distant reminiscence. The HOF circled in her head. Different LPGA legends would discuss to and commiserate along with her about it.

Seemingly out of nowhere, Ko gained the primary LPGA occasion of 2024, incomes HOF level No. 26. All she wanted was yet one more valuable level, and it practically occurred per week later. Needing a birdie to win on the ultimate gap, her strategy shot missed the inexperienced and got here to a cease, oddly, towards a bouquet of 27 white roses the LPGA had introduced out greenside — together with a bottle of champagne — one for every Corridor 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 make use of her phrases, however rapidly realized its the phrases of others that drive the purpose dwelling. Ko was requested about being on the doorstep of the HOF at principally each event she entered. You possibly can really feel some ache in her solutions early within the yr — Florida was a misplaced alternative. And for somebody who has all the time talked about retiring at age 30, a deadline appeared within the distance. A lot that Ko started struggling once more. Her mom, Hyeon Bong-sook, and husband, Jun Chung, stepped in.

“I believe they made me understand that, hey, even when it doesn’t occur, that’s simply my destiny,” Ko stated. “I’m going to do my very best to maintain placing myself in competition and in good place going into the ultimate days, however whether or not it occurs or not, I believe there’s a golf God someplace that controls it.”

That’s when she began scripting.

“If I do win gold at Paris,” Ko stated simply 17 days in the past on the Canadian Open, ”I really feel like someone must 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 Corridor of Fame but additionally for Ko’s Olympics journey. Earlier than this week, she was already probably the most embellished participant in golf’s younger Olympic lifespan. She gained silver in Rio after which 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 little thing from whiskey bottles to memorabilia to Olympic {hardware}. The bronze is along with her sister, in Korea, the place it was on show at their grandmother’s funeral. 

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

“You say these type of issues and till it actually occurs, it’s not likely factual,” Ko stated. “You realize, it’s one thing that you simply maintain going in the direction of, 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 maintain tempo with Morgane Metraux’s scorching, eight-under begin. Once I requested Ko concerning the Corridor of Fame on the midway level, she punched again with a little bit of sarcasm. In brief, this course is simply too arduous to consider the rest, however, “It’s actually cool that if I did win the gold, I may get within the Corridor of Fame, and it could cease all these questions, like from you, sooner or later.”

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. However when Ko shot 68 Friday to tie for the 54-hole lead, there have been no Corridor of Fame q’s. We have been transfixed by her admission that she deleted Instagram off her telephone for the week — throughout probably 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 down my very own ending.”

Conveniently on Saturday, half the contenders started to write down the ending for her. At a course setup that rivaled main championships, on which everybody within the subject harassed endurance all week, aggressive pursuits of the rostrum started backfiring. Hannah Inexperienced and Rouning Yin have 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 observe Scottie Scheffler along with her personal best-player-in-the-world comeback, made two birdies in her first three holes, however bought unfastened off the tee and left her medal hopes within the water, too. Le Golf Nationwide was reaching out and grabbing gamers. Nary a single scorecard was spared.

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

Ko’s ending was written not with a pen however with endurance. She labored via nervy three-footers on 15 and 16, all whereas being timed by guidelines officers. A number of occasions, her enjoying companions waited out her putts from the subsequent tee field.

“We follow lots of [three-footers] once we are coaching,” Ko stated. It was the very last thing she did earlier than teeing off Saturday. “However you don’t understand how vital these are till you’re in these type of circumstances and you’ve got a number of in a row.”

At 17, she backed off a tee shot as spectators raced by above, after which roasted a drive that led to a par. The ultimate gap at Le Golf Nationwide was modified to a par-5 for the ladies, and Ko performed it precisely how it’s best to with a one-shot lead. Fairway, layup, inexperienced.

When the birdie putt dropped, her hand was already overlaying her mouth. Tears have been already in her eyes. Tears have been a theme of the day, for bronze medalist Xiyu Lin, burying her face in her fiancé’s shoulder. For Mariajo Uribe, her eyelids swollen after ending her profession with an eagle. After which extra tears for Ko, when she lastly bought a view from the prime degree of the rostrum, 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 Corridor of Fame questions shall be alongside the strains of When will we have fun?

“For it to have occurred right here on the Olympics, unreal,” she stated. “I do really feel like I’m a legendary character in a narrative story. It actually couldn’t have gotten any higher than I may have imagined. I’ve had so many grateful issues that occurred in my profession thus far, and this actually tops it.”

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