Golf

2024 Olympics: Golfer Lydia Ko Scores Gold, Gets Inducted Into LPGA Hall of Fame

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Aug 13, 2024 / 1661 Views

Evan Walker

Lydia Ko’s tryst with golf has been tempered by conviction. Telling herself all along the way, “she believed she could”, Ko found vindication again on Saturday, August 10, at the 2024 Paris Olympics. In her decorated professional career, which spans over a decade, and has seen the Korean-born Kiwi win 20 times on the LPGA Tour, a gold from the Olympics had long been missing from the mantlepiece — but Lydia Ko has now rectified that.

The 2016 Rio Games was golf’s comeback, and Ko started writing her Olympic script as well, and which concluded with gold at the Le Golf National over the weekend following the two-shot win over Germany’s silver medallist Esther Henseleit. China’s Xiyu Lin mounted the podium as the bronze medallist.

Lydia Ko and her historic gold medal in women’s golf at the 2024 Paris Olympics

A Cinderella story

The phase from Rio to Paris, Tokyo being a stopover in 2021, was one of coming close but being denied the ultimate prize. Bobbing in hope and despair in that quest for the elusive Olympic gold, the silver at Rio had raised visions of a medal with a better hue in Tokyo.

But it was not to be. In fact, a double whammy rolled out in Tokyo. In contention for silver at one point, she was denied by Japan’s Mone Inami in the playoff, so bronze it was for Lydia Ko.

There was a lot riding on Ko as she came into this week seeking to be the most decorated athlete in Olympic Golf.

A spot in LPGA’s Hall of Fame also loomed on the horizon, and asked what if gold heralded her inclusion in LPGA’s pantheon of greats, Ko had responded, “It would be a hell of a way to do it.”

It turned out to be so on Saturday, August 10, 2024. And in the process, Ko also made the short ground she needed to cover to be called a Hall of Fame member.

The latest addition to the Olympic collection is also in line with Ko’s journey as a world Traveller. Her silver from Rio is in Korea, the bronze in America, where she has a base, and it remains to be seen where the Paris gold will make its way.

Dubbing her Olympic campaign a “Cinderella story”, Ko shared that her run in Paris also had its share of troughs. From a slow start, stepping up through the week till she held a five-shot lead at one point on Saturday, to watching the cushion whittle down to a shot, Ko’s game was filled with ups and downs.

“Cinderella’s glass slippers are see-through, and my podium shoes are also see-through. That’s something that we have going for us. I feel like I’m part of this story tale,” she said. “Going into this week, everyone was saying, ‘Oh! what if you finish and collect gold’. Of course I wanted to do that, complete it, too.”

lydia ko olympics golf gold 2024 — (From left to right): Women’s golf medallists Esther Henseleit, Lydia Ko and Lin Xiyu on the 2024 Paris Olympics podium. (Image: Andrew Redington/ Getty Images)

Easier said than done, as it required Ko to come up with monk-like discipline. She put her Instagram account on pause to shut out the outside noise, letting nothing come between golf and her.

“I didn’t want to be fazed by what other people were saying, and it’s definitely a life peak for me here. I don’t think I’ve experienced this kind of adrenaline before, and to do it here, it really can’t get any better,” said Ko on finishing with a birdie to win by two shots at 10-under 278 (72, 67, 68, 71).

Tribute to family

To pull it off in front of her family added to the occasion and tested her ability to hold back emotions.

Atop the Olympics podium, the gold medal proudly dangling from her neck, Lydia Ko seemed calm and composed. But hearing her country’s national anthem, ‘God Defend New Zealand’, had her succumbing to the enormity of the moment.

Tears welled up, and there was no attempt to stop the flow. Ko wanted her family to know that the gold medal and podium finish was her way of thanking them for their efforts.

Through the week, she used a ball marker with her husband Jun Chung’s name, and to have her mother and sister oversee the epochal moment of Ko’s triumph in national colours had a cascading effect on the player.

“I don’t have our National Anthem on repeat on Spotify. Listening to it, I can understand why Scottie Scheffler [the men’s gold medallist] was so emotional last Sunday. It’s a feeling that you can really not repeat unless you are in that position again. I know that it’s probably never coming again,” explained Ko.

Ko has come a long way since she first won among pros as a teenage amateur, and became the youngest (male or female) World No 1 in 2015.

Which sparked the question from several reporters after her win: Now that she has finally clinched an Olympic gold — an achievement of Himalayan proportions — what’s next?

Ko read between the lines, and dealt with the hint at retirement smartly.

“I have great days and I’m like, ‘I want to play as long as I can,’ and then I have days where I wake up with a sore low back, and I’m like, ‘I don’t think I can make it anymore.’ I don’t think there is a specific date, and now that I’ve got in the Hall of Fame, I don’t know if that affects anything. Golf has given me so much, and I know that my ending is sooner than when it first started. So, I wanted to really enjoy it, and while I am competitively playing, I want to play the best golf I can. I think this takes a little bit of weight off my shoulders,” she said.

Ko will let time take a call on walking away, but for now, it is all about soaking in the moment.

Career-defining round

Esther Henseleit came to Paris as a relatively under-the-radar player, and that worked in her favour as she came away with the standing of an Olympic medallist in her debut appearance.

A two-time winner on the Ladies European Tour, the 25-year-old German is building a reputation on the LPGA as she searches for that defining moment that will get her into the winners’ circle.

Opening with rounds of 72, 73 and 69, Henseleit was not even a dark horse going into Saturday. Seven shot off the leader, she needed to play out of her skin and come up with a round to shake up the leaderboard.

A six-under 66 it was, but even in the midst of playing aggressive Golf, Henseleit kept reminding herself of the possibilities. Among them was, “With four groups still behind me, they can still make a lot of birdies. Especially coming in, you get some chances. 18 (the final hole) is a great chance.”

The birdie on the 17th had a calming effect with the assurance that a medal was in her grasp. To finish with one more birdie cemented her spot, and fulfilled the wish that took shape as she gathered momentum through Saturday.

“If there’s one person who I would want to finish in front of me, it’s probably Lydia. It’s not sunken in yet. I’ll need a few days. But it’s amazing to be sitting up here with two of the best Golfers in the world. I think I’m the first European to get an Olympic medal, so that’s definitely very special.”

Sound advice

On the topic of battles on the Olympic platform, China’s Xiyu Lin has had her share. From 38th in Rio, she signalled a major improvement with a T9 in Tokyo. Paris was the ideal ground to usher in a medal, provided Lin, 28, was ready to shake off an up-and-down 2024 season on the LPGA, and tee off with a clean slate.

Lin had watched her senior teaMMAte, Shanshan Feng, mount the podium as the bronze medallist in Rio, and seeking advice before landing in Paris was a natural move.

The conversation meandered in a way that Lin emerged out of it believing that the podium would be within grasp this time. “I said to Shanshan, ‘I don’t know, what should I be thinking going into this Olympics? I feel like this year, I haven’t been doing lots of good’. She said, ‘Well, this is your third. So, what finish you think that you will be happy with yourself’?’”

Lin reply was, “Just get a medal, to which Feng said, ‘Yeah, let’s just do it then’.”

The conversation helped Lin put the blinkers on. “That conversation was very important for me and narrowed everything down.”

Coupling Feng’s encouragement with the pride of turning out for her country for the third time, Lin worked up a heady concoction that showed in her performance through the week.

It wasn’t flashy golf as Lin went about proving that consistency comes with a reward as well with rounds of 71, 70, 71, 69 for a total of 7-under 281.

More details about Lydia Ko at the 2024 Paris Olympics golf event here.

(Main and featured image: Andrew Redington/ Getty Images)