OK, so, wow!! Today, Lydia Ko did to Suzanne Pettersen and Caroline Hedwall, the heroines of the Solheim Cup, what she did to world #1s Ji-Yai Shin and Stacy Lewis last year in the CN Canadian Women's Open. Ko went out in 30 to take a 3-shot lead on Pettersen and a 4-shot lead on Hedwall, added her 6th birdie in her 1st 12 holes of bogey-free golf to get to -15, then coasted home with a single bogey and a walkoff birdie as Hedwall bogeyed 2 of her 1st 4 on the back and Pettersen added a double to her 2 bogeys in her last 4 holes.
In the end, Karine Icher's 4-birdie 67 got her to -10, making her the only other player in the field to achieve double digits under par this week and sneaking her past Hedwall, who got caught at -9 by Brittany Lincicome's 69. A 68 by Stacy Prammanasudh and a 70 by In-Kyung Kim got them to -8, 1 shot ahead of Pettersen and another Solheim Cup teammate Caroline Masson (who made a big move in the Rookie of the Year race as Chie Arimura missed the cut and Moriya Jutanugarn finished, oh, 24 shots behind Ko).
In fact, 11 of the top 16 golfers were Solheim Cuppers, but none had the reserves to keep up with the 16-year-old phenom from New Zealand. Ko finished 12 shots ahead of fellow teen sensation Charley Hull and 13 ahead of Lexi Thompson. She now has as many LPGA victories as So Yeon Ryu, Anna Nordqvist, Sun Young Yoo, Morgan Pressel, Michelle Wie, Meena Lee, Stacy Prammanasudh, Momoko Ueda, Katherine Hull-Kirk, Jeong Jang, Jimin Kang, Jennifer Rosales, Karen Stupples, Christina Kim, Laura Diaz, Carin Koch, and Ji Young Oh, among others.
I'm floored. What a performance! And she's still an amateur!!
5 comments:
and it looks like she barely breaks a sweat doing it. quite a story.
and only 16 years old!
Lydia Ko only proves that she's not an amateur anymore. She may be 16 but the golf tricks she showed off during the game are by far better than her opponents. Keep it up!
She may only be 16 but the way she played in the game was superb. I'm just wondering if she had gone through a sort of golf training. I can't believe it at first that she's going to make it but golf has evolved already so what a real surprise!
This is a great victory.
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