By: Max Bechtoldt
The start of the 2024 LPGA Tour season brings a thought about Lydia Ko, one of the greatest LPGA players of all time, a two-time major champion and two-time LPGA Player of the Year. Will she be back to her elite level in this new year?
Lydia Ko has been inconsistent in her career. When she turned 20 she already had two majors and 14 wins. In addition, she won the silver medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics. Ko was already being discussed as one of the all-time greats.
She then seemingly hit a wall. Ko won only one tournament between 2017-2020. It was a pretty shocking fall from the top of the women’s golf world for a prodigy-level player. The defining moment of that drought was her collapse at the 2020 Marathon Open, where she had a double bogey on the final hole to lose by one stroke to close friend Danielle Kang.
The upswing came in 2022, when Ko had a huge comeback, winning three tournaments, including the CME Group Tour Championship for the second time. Her great season included three top-10 finishes in majors and led to a Player of the Year win. Whether you think she deserved to beat Jennifer Kupcho and Minjee Lee for that award is irrelevant, Lydia Ko was back.
So what happened in 2023? Ko missed four cuts and didn’t have a top-five finish until late October at the BMW Ladies Championship. While she swung up at the end of the season, she still missed qualifying for the CME finals. The story is in her KPMG Performance Insights, which had her in 57th in strokes gained total among qualifying players. While she was eighth in strokes gained around the green, known as her strength, she wasn’t converting well, finishing 73rd in strokes gained putting.
Can she recover in 2024? Absolutely. She starts at Lake Nona, a course she has played well in the past. She also finished in the top 11 three times in her last four 2023 events, including her win alongside Jason Day in The Grant Thornton Invitational. Ko is one of the worst drivers of the golf ball on tour, last year ranking 140th in strokes gained driving, but her short game rules all. She is the only two-time Olympic golf medalist, so the Paris games feels like it could be a big momentum helper. I think Ko will bounce back and look much closer to her 2022 form, than her lackluster 2023 season.
