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<\/p>\nHall of Famer. Olympic gold medallist. Lydia Ko has done it all and now she\u2019s using that perch to lift the next generation of women\u2019s golf, including the very rivals chasing her records.<\/p>\n
Lydia Ko would like nothing more than to talk about Lego. This is not where I expected the conversation to go, 20 minutes into a call with a woman who has an Olympic gold medal, a career Grand Slam and a plaque from the LPGA Hall of Fame sitting in her house. She has just come off a sponsor\u2019s day in Orlando, Florida.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s like Lego blocks,\u201d Ko says, apropos of her entire career, and the sentence I did not see coming from the 29-year-old currently ranked among the most decorated players of her generation. \u201cIt\u2019s one block and then two blocks and three blocks and all of a sudden you have this huge home that you\u2019re like, Wow, when did this happen? It\u2019s with time and patience and belief that all this happens.\u201d<\/p>\n
Every block she describes, I\u2019ll come to learn, was laid by the same person: a kid from Auckland who never quite let go of who she was before any of this started.<\/p>\n
It is, on reflection, a very Ko answer, disarmingly plain-spoken for someone with more than a decade of professional golf. She is not talking about her own career here. She could not possibly be talking about anything else.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
KEEPING HER OWN SCORE<\/p>\n
For someone with her r\u00e9sum\u00e9, Ko is remarkably willing to admit how hard-won her self-belief has been.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve had years when even internally I thought maybe I am unbeatable, where I feel like superwoman,\u201d she says. \u201cThen I\u2019ve had years where I\u2019m like, Why am I playing? What is next? Do I deserve to be out here?\u201d<\/p>\n
Superwoman one year, questioning everything the next. It\u2019s a swing most women will recognise, even if the stakes for the rest of us rarely come with an Olympic medal attached.<\/p>\n
It helps that Ko is so willing to say it plainly in the first place. She\u2019s well spoken, considered, never careless with a word, but she\u2019s not interested in performing confidence for a camera and that same honesty is what lets her talk about 2023 without softening it. It was one of her hardest years. Ko missed the cut at the AIG Women\u2019s Open, played \u201cdead last\u201d as a one-ball at the Canadian Women\u2019s Open and missed another cut the next week in Portland. She remembers a Friday evening spent crying over Thai food with her sister, unsure what would come next.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt like I was putting in the same amount of effort or even trying more, yet the return was nothing,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was hard because when you keep putting in and you just keep getting pushed down and down, it\u2019s really hard to see the vision. I felt like I had an ultimate low.\u201d<\/p>\n
What pulled her out wasn\u2019t grit in the way we usually imagine. It was a conversation with her mental coach where she finally said the thing out loud.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know if I love golf, but I love excelling at what I do,\u201d she says. \u201cI think that is probably the biggest motivation for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
That distinction, subtle but hard-won, reframed everything for her. By 2024, Ko had won Olympic gold at the Paris Games and been inducted into the LPGA Hall of Fame. But ask her what she\u2019s proudest of from that week and it isn\u2019t the medal.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just so proud of myself for overcoming my own doubts,\u201d she says. \u201cLike, even if this is it, it\u2019s fine. You\u2019ve been so successful before, you\u2019ve got nothing to prove. It really didn\u2019t matter to me, because I felt like I was a disappointment to myself and my team. That was the first time in my career that I felt like I truly persevered.\u201d<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
A KIWI FOUNDATION<\/p>\n
Ko traces much of her grounded outlook back to where she grew up. She has South Korean heritage and was raised in New Zealand from early childhood, arriving there speaking no English.<\/p>\n
\u201cI only knew four letters of the alphabet and I knew it as ABDC,\u201d she laughs. \u201cIt was terrible.\u201d<\/p>\n
Golf, she says, was never the national obsession there that rugby, cricket or netball were. Her club charged $250 a year, a figure that apparently stunned her American friends, who were paying $500 for a single round.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI grew up in a country that is so down to earth and nothing is so flashy, I was just part of a club,\u201d Ko says. \u201cIt\u2019s unheard of [in many places], right? But for me, that was normal.\u201d<\/p>\n
That upbringing, she believes, shaped more than just her values, it shaped how she plays.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think a lot of how I go about things is kind of like that Kiwi style and I really embrace that,\u201d she says. \u201cI honestly miss home. But I do think that a lot of the way I think about things, and especially on the course, is a lot of that same girl from New Zealand.\u201d<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
LIFTING AS SHE CLIMBS<\/p>\n
If there\u2019s a throughline in everything Ko says, it\u2019s an instinct to look inward, then reflect what she finds back out. To credit the players who came before her. To actively will success for the ones coming up behind.<\/p>\n
She talks warmly about Karrie Webb as a role model for Australian golf, crediting her influence for the rise of players like Minjee Lee, Hannah Green and Cassie Porter. \u201cI think we are going to be in her kind of shoes in a little time,\u201d Ko says, \u201cso it\u2019s very important for us to keep those standards high, just like our role models ahead of us.\u201d<\/p>\n
She is equally generous about her fellow competitors on tour today, describing the camaraderie of the LPGA as one of its defining features. \u201cI think one of the best traits about the LPGA Tour is when a player wins, there\u2019s another player spraying champagne or there to congratulate them,\u201d Ko says. \u201cI truly think that is one of the greatest things about the LPGA. One day when I retire, I know that there\u2019s still going to be some players that I\u2019m going to keep in touch with and they will be some of my closest friends.\u201d<\/p>\n
That spirit extends directly to Jeeno Thitikul, the young Thai star widely tipped to inherit Ko\u2019s mantle at the top of the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhenever I play with Jeeno, there\u2019s aspects of her game that I look up to,\u201d Ko says. \u201cBut I think one of the big things is her demeanour and how she carries herself on the course. She could be having a bad day, even though bad days don\u2019t happen very often for Jeeno and she has the same composure. I think that makes a very high-calibre golfer.\u201d<\/p>\n
She\u2019s also thinking generations ahead. Asked about Rolex\u2019s \u201cReach for the Crown\u201d philosophy, Ko turns the conversation towards the girls who\u2019ll be watching her now.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s going to be 12-year-old girls in 10 years\u2019 time who maybe will be a Rolex testimonee, and how I carry myself is going to be a reflection of how they\u2019re going to go about their business and who they want to be,\u201d she says. \u201cSo I think it really matters.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ko has watched the women\u2019s game globalise dramatically since she turned pro, moving from a period of Korean dominance to a genuinely international leaderboard spanning Japan, Thailand, Australia, Europe and the United States. Rather than seeing that as competition for her own legacy, she frames it as validation of everything the sport has built.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think one country has a secret to it all,\u201d she says. \u201cIn the game of golf in general, the leaderboards have become a lot more global. It\u2019s crazy to think, because it just means it\u2019s way more competitive. I think this is great for the game of golf.\u201d<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
BALANCE, FINALLY<\/p>\n
Much of Ko\u2019s current perspective comes down to a balance she\u2019s had to properly fight for after more than a decade at the top of a sport that doesn\u2019t hand it out freely.<\/p>\n
Her husband, she says half-jokingly, was \u201cmy lucky charm\u201d, arriving in her life the same week she snapped a three-year winless drought in 2021. \u201cGolf has given me a lot,\u201d she says, \u201cand thanks to my husband, I really have a little bit more of that balance in my life and something to come back to.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would be a lie if I said golf didn\u2019t affect me and still doesn\u2019t affect me, because it still does,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd the day it doesn\u2019t, it probably means I don\u2019t care anymore. And that\u2019s when I should probably go look for another job.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ko isn\u2019t building just for herself anymore, not entirely. Every block she lays now, on the course and off it, seems aimed at making the path easier for whoever comes next, whether that\u2019s Thitikul or a 12-year-old somewhere who hasn\u2019t picked up a club yet.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI know that there are not many things in the world that I\u2019m going to be able to do at a very high level,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m trying to take that in as more gratitude. One day I\u2019m going to be 70 years old, watching the LPGA Tour and seeing an even more diverse leaderboard. That\u2019s honestly what I really look forward to.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Photographs by Rolex\/J.D. Cuban; getty images\/kevin c. Cox, Rolex\/chris turvey<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hall of Famer. Olympic gold medallist. Lydia Ko has done it all and now she\u2019s using that perch…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":954299,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,30658,85,521873],"class_list":["post-954298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-golf","tag-lydia-ko","tag-sports","tag-womens-edition-summer-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/954298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=954298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/954298\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/954299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=954298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=954298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=954298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}