She’s not gone yet

St. Andrews, Scotland – Five days ago, 27-year-old Lydia Ko was asked a personal question. If you decided to retire, would you do it quickly, after an epic performance, or would you play the rest of the season and then quit?

The significance was obvious. We’re in St. Andrews and she was preparing to play on an old golf course and pose for photos on the Swilcan Bridge, two weeks after winning Olympic gold and securing her ticket to the LPGA Hall of Fame. If you win this week, will you retire?

That was Wednesday, and what she said was important for the next five days. The idea of ​​a walk-off victory was making the rounds. But on Sunday night, what she had said didn’t matter. Because Ko did to win this Old Course Open, and she just kept going. Her alarm is set to go off before dawn. She has a 5:50 a.m. flight to Boston on Monday. The show goes on.

WE WILL MISS LYDIA KO when she will leave. Whenever that day will come, we don’t know. She doesn’t know either – or if she does, she hasn’t told us. But no modern player has considered a premature end at such a young age as she has. Nine years ago, when Ko was just 17, the golf world gasped when she announced her plan to retire at 30.

A lot has happened since then. A lot. Ko regrets being open about her thoughts about retirement. But the questions remain, because those thoughts were once real, and they haven’t gone away. She’s still serious about leaving the game, and soon… sort of. Sooner than most of her contemporaries would be. Ko thought Suzann Pettersen’s retirement after she holed a game-winning putt at the Solheim Cup was “so cool, dropping the mic.” Just this week, Ko asked 36-year-old Jiyai Shin, who left the LPGA Tour 10 years ago at the peak of her career, for details on how she did it. Shin had served as a mentor to Ko, which is ironic, because Shin nearly won that Women’s Open herself — finishing second by just two strokes — and then ran to hug Ko before she even signed her own scorecard. Shin doesn’t want Ko to go anywhere.

“I’m still going, so I say to her, ‘Look at me,'” Shin said on Sunday. “I just keep saying, ‘Look at me.’ She says she wants to take the next step. But I say, ‘We have the next step here too.’ This is my third time at St. Andrews. If she retires, there’s no chance of coming back… I just keep saying, ‘Don’t go away.'”

It is a dilemma: How Do You retire, and you retire early, make peace with what you’ve done, and still try to do a little more? Ask Andy Murray, the British tennis player whose singles career ended last month with a two-day, five-set match at Wimbledon after he quickly returned to action following final back surgery. Like Ko, Murray had floated the idea of ​​a relatively early retirement, and he was asked about the R-word so many times he had to beg reporters to stop asking. His retirement has lost some of its dignity. His mother’s opinion on the subject made headlines. The same goes for his opponents. The late stages can get ugly. Both physically and mentally.

As was widely discussed after her Olympic victory two weeks ago, Ko’s 2023 season was the worst of her career. With 20 wins, she was on the verge of induction into the LPGA Hall of Fame, but she was two points away from getting in. She worked hard to achieve that achievement, especially as her form slipped and she cried in hotel rooms from Arkansas to Oregon.

“I remember missing the cut in Portland last year,” she said on Saturday. “I ate Texas barbecue, but I couldn’t taste anything because I was crying so much with my sister. Speaking of What’s up? What’s next? I feel lost. I don’t know if I can win in the future. You know, all these thoughts were going through my head.”

Ko broke through in January at the first event of 2024, the Tournament of Champions, leaving her just one point away from being inducted into the Hall of Fame. A week later, a birdie on the 72nd hole would have secured her a place in history, but she missed the green with her approach shot and lost in a playoff to Nelly Korda. That upset – Ko’s ball literally rolled against the champagne the LPGA had brought to the green to celebrate – sent her reeling again. Ko missed several cuts and didn’t finish in the top 10 for four months. How devastating would it be to end a career one point short of the Hall of Fame? But also: how much of a waste would it be to keep going for years and still not win? Two people from her camp had to step in and put her on the right path: her mother Hyeon Bong-sook and her husband Jin Chung.

“I told her, ‘Hey, if you really want to settle down professionally, this is your last chance to enjoy this part of your life,'” Chung said Sunday night. “I think that’s where that attitude comes from. I think it eased her fears a lot.”

To reach a place of acceptance with the items still unchecked on her pre-retirement to-do list—not just the Hall of Fame, but also winning a major for the first time in eight years—Ko had to reverse her future and envision an even longer path.

“Someone pointed that out to me before I won the gold,” Ko said. “They said, ‘Try to think of being inducted into the Hall of Fame as a gas station on the way to my final destination, rather than my final destination.’ I think that was my goal for a while. I made it seem like the Hall of Fame was my end point, and I think after hearing that, I put it in perspective and said, ‘You know, it’s not like I’m going to get into the Hall of Fame and then say, ‘Bye, golf.'”

“I still plan to play. I think that makes it easier to say: If it’s meant to happen, then it’s meant to happen, and I’m also going to focus on what’s in front of me. I think the last three weeks have been kind of a representation of that magnitude.”

Ko’s caddie Paul Cormack, who picked up her bag a year ago, said her boss was at his best at the Olympics. And after her win in Paris, Ko danced just as carefree around St. Andrews, even posing for a family photo at the back of the driving range on Sunday afternoon. When you are in St. Andrews…

But there were no podium places in Scotland. Only one player would win. And Ko seemed certain of second place.

When she left THE On the 16th tee on Sunday, Ko was six under par and two behind the world’s No. 1 player, Nelly Korda, who had played her best golf of the week, shooting three under par on holes 7 through 13. But improbably, Korda short-circuited on the 14th fairway and made double bogey on a reachable par 5. On hole 16, Ko had hit a three-foot chipping shot and paused to comprehend what she was seeing on the leaderboard.

“The 3-foot putt somehow seemed a little longer to me at the time,” she said. “Because I thought it was an easy putt, but then I looked at it from every possible angle.”

It may have been pure coincidence – a sort of mini-phase in a wild and windy 72-hole tournament that confirms convenient narratives (such as Ko playing her best golf when she knew she was in the lead). However coincidental it may sound, the evidence of Ko’s outstanding performance will stand forever in Golf Place, across the street in the R&A Museum.

Ko only needed eight shots to get from that nerve-racking 3-foot putt to the finish. On hole 17, she hit a perfect tee shot across the “course” at the Old Course Hotel. Then she braved the sideways rain lashing her face with a low-hitting 3-wood that tumbled onto the green and left her with an easy two-putt. On hole 18, she lobbed a wedge to 8 feet for birdie. Her sister Sura, a former player herself, commented: “This means a lot to her. She hasn’t had a birdie on hole 18 all week.”

For the second time on Sunday, Ko reached seven under par – and waited on the putting green for 30 minutes to see if Lilia Vu, the defending champion, could do better. The scenario provided a setting not often seen in this game: The clubhouse manager stood near the 18th green, but with an unobstructed view. Between Ko and Vu was a white fence and 65 yards of links grass. iPhones and eyeballs wobbled around her. When Vu missed her putt, Ko dropped her head in her hands. She was officially a three-time major winner.

KO’S TEAM WAS READY TO CELEBRATE. Her caddy is Scottish; he’s going to have a great time tonight. When I met Ko’s husband, he was just opening his first celebratory beer. But his wife’s celebration? That won’t be anything special. At least not yet. A burger for dinner, their Sunday night tradition, before the dawn flight to Boston. That career continues. But she doesn’t stop teaching us things.

“I played here in 2013 when I was 16,” Ko said on Sunday evening, the trophy lying on the table in front of him. “I don’t think I was able to really enjoy it and appreciate what a great place this is. And now that I’m a little older and hopefully a little wiser, I’ve realized what a historic and special place this golf course is and it really was like a fairytale.”

It may sound cliché, but it’s true. Winning an Open is one thing, but winning an Open at St Andrews is quite another. The game was invented and designed here. Sand was hauled from the nearby beach to create the hills that make up the world’s most iconic golf arena. The sport’s greatest champions have all triumphed here. You see them in the grey stone buildings that line the streets. Cam Smith’s picture hangs on the wall at the R&A, Claret Jug in hand. Jack Nicklaus’ swing and signature hang just around the corner, near the entrance to St Andrews Golf Club.

Ko’s husband Chung has spent the week soaking up the scenery. He’s a golf nerd extraordinaire and this was his first foray into this hallowed golfing ground. You can be sure he’s brought his clubs and secured tee times at Kingsbarns, further down the coast, and Dumbarnie, even further down the coast. A round on the Old is high on his bucket list. A week of watching the Women’s Open will do that to you, especially if your bride is the winner.

“When she was playing, I looked at the R&A and St. Andrews Golf Club and looked at the history,” he said with a smile of pride, joy and wondering what’s next. “To win at this place is just unbelievable.”

There will be a familiar face on his next visit.