LPGA hall-of-famer Lydia Ko got off to a good start in the 2024 CME Group Tour Championship, shooting -5 in Thursday’s opening round.
Ko got off to a bit of a suspect start. After a birdie on hole two, she fell to even par with a bogey on four. From that point though, she never looked back, with birdies on 5, 6, 9 and 11. She got one more on the par 5 17, which was surrendering a lot of them throughout the day.
Ko showed off her much improved driving accuracy on Thursday. In 2023, Ko was hitting just 62.61% of fairways, one of the worst marks on tour. In 2024, she is hitting 70.38%, a massive jump. In the opening round in Naples, she hit every single fairway, going 14/14.
“Overall I didn’t really put myself out of position and I played really solid and gave myself a lot of good looks for birdies,” said Ko.
Ko currently sits in a tie for fifth place, three strokes back of the lead.
Not quite playing as well was world No. 1 Nelly Korda, who grinded out an even par opening round. Despite her putter performing well last week, Korda had 32 putts Thursday, letting down her strong ball striking.
Korda will be in the ESPN+ featured group coverage today, teeing it up alongside Lexi Thompson at 8:35 eastern time.
Narin An currently holds the lead at -8, with Angel Yin close behind at -7.
