Down but never out, Lydia Ko’s career resurgence is one for the ages

There’s really no one in the history of golf like Lydia Ko.

First, there’s a pretty air-tight argument that Ko is the greatest very young player in golf history.

Yes, including Tiger Woods, who from the ages of 15 through 20 won three straight U.S. Juniors followed by three straight U.S. Amateurs. But in the 14 PGA Tour events he played as an amateur from 1992 to 1996, he made five cuts, with a best finish of T-22 at the 1996 British Open.

By comparison, Ko won a professional event as a 14-year-old amateur, the 2012 Women’s NSW Open on the Australasia tour. Then, still an amateur, she became the youngest to win on the LPGA Tour with the 2012 CN Canadian Open and repeated in 2013. After turning professional at the start of the 2014 season at age 16, she went on to win 12 events in her first three seasons, including two majors, and at age 17 became the youngest golfer of either gender to reach World No. 1.

Indeed, as far as winning at the highest level at the youngest age, Ko’s closest historical rival is not Woods, but Young Tom Morris, who was 17 in 1868 when he won the first of four consecutive Open Championships.

But here’s the other thing about Lydia Ko. Just as she rose sooner, faster and higher than anyone else, she suffered a sudden and precipitous fall. Beginning in 2017, she won only twice in her next five seasons, and in 2020 sank as low as 55th on the Rolex Rankings.

The cause remains a mystery even to Ko, whose work ethic or outward zeal would never flag. Eyebrows were raised at the 2015 Australian Open, which she won at 17 and said in the same week that she intended to retire at age 30 with a plan to work in the field of psychology. “I was just fascinated about why I do certain things, why other people do certain things,” she would say later.

But why at such a young age, and in the midst of such a charmed start, would she see herself finished so soon?

Ko’s reversal of fortune would actually begin in the latter half of her most successful season, 2016. After winning the ANA Inspiration, she attempted to become only the third woman to win three majors championships in a row at the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship. But 18-year-old Brooke Henderson, who had caught Ko with a late rush, beat her in sudden death.