By Amy Rogers
HAMILTON TOWNSHIP, Ohio – It’s been a year since Lydia Ko’s fairytale run saw her capture Olympic gold to earn her way into the LPGA Hall of Fame, win her third major at the AIG Women’s Open, and follow that up with another victory in her very next start at the Kroger Queen City Championship presented by P&G. The past 12 months have gone quickly for Ko, who says there are still times that she finds herself struggling to believe all that she has achieved in the last year.
“It’s crazy to think that even happened a year ago,” Ko said from the media center on Wednesday at TPC River’s Bend. “Time goes by so fast and maybe I wish I was playing more in that form then than now.”
That’s not to say Ko hasn’t enjoyed success this season on the LPGA Tour. Ko captured her 23rd career win in February at the HSBC Women’s World Championship and she returns to Ohio off of a top-5 finish in her last start at the CPKC Women’s Open, where she led the tour in strokes gained putting and had 35 one-putts over the course of 72-holes.
What did Ko find with her putter in Canada? She doesn’t exactly know. She says her putting “literally went out the window,” at the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship in June as she went on to miss the cut in her next two starts and whatever it was she discovered in Canada she said she was thrilled to have found and celebrated that with her team.
“I have no idea, but I was so excited that my putting was so good,” Ko said with a chuckle, unsure of what was behind her putting prowess in Canada. “I tried so many putters in the off week during that time that I was struggling to see maybe just something new would just change it up a little bit for me. But I realized that the gamer that I had was the one.”
But Ko went ahead and made a change anyway. Sort of.
Ko will put a new putter into competition at the Kroger Queen City Championship. But there’s nothing new about it Ko says, except the color. Ko had been searching for something new, or different, but had a lot of success with the Scotty Cameron she had been using off and on since 2022. So rather than make any technical adjustments, Ko simply changed the color, switching from a brown version of her trusty putter to a black version, which she will be using when play begins on Thursday.
“There is no technical reason behind it. I know black is a slimming color, but that’s about it. The putter head looks exactly the same. It’s built the same,” Ko said about her new flatstick. “I said, ‘yeah, so how about we just color it black so it’s something different.’”
Ko continues to feel the impacts of her remarkable run last season as she returns to Ohio as defending champion. In fact, it was just this week that she was able to formally thank members of her team who helped her win at the Paris Olympics.
Ko had been waiting for months for the arrival of the pin flags from Le Golf National, where she won Olympic gold, for her to sign and distribute to members of her support staff. In January, Ko’s team learned that they needed to order the flags while they were still in Paris, but they had immediately departed following Ko’s victory in order to make it to the LPGA Tour’s next stop in Scotland. In May, Ko’s team was able to connect with a member on the board of the International Golf Federation to get an order placed and to get 100 flags sent to the gold medalist. This week in Ohio, Ko was able to present those flags to some of the members of her team as a way of saying thank you.
While some of those same feelings from last year’s super stretch have carried over for Ko, much will be different too. With the Ohio valley receiving more rain than it did last year, the course is playing softer and longer than it did a year ago. Ko’s ball striking was an area she pointed to as a key to her success last season, which lifted her to a course record and final round of 63 at TPC RIver’s Bend. This season, Ko hasn’t been as pleased with her ball striking as she’s dropped from 81st to 124th in Driving Accuracy and is ranked 50th on Tour in Greens In Regulation. And Ko doesn’t expect that scores will be as low at this week’s Kroger Queen City Championship presented by P&G as she saw with her 23-under par winning total last season.
“It’s a game of inches and a couple shots here and there that can make a huge difference,” Ko said ahead of her title defense. “Yeah, hopefully be able to just keep building the momentum and see where that puts me at the end of the year.”
