{"id":498029,"date":"2026-03-27T09:41:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T09:41:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/498029\/"},"modified":"2026-03-27T09:41:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T09:41:10","slug":"lpga-tour-lydia-ko-records-career-best-round-to-lead-at-ford-championship-golf-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/498029\/","title":{"rendered":"LPGA Tour: Lydia Ko records career-best round to lead at Ford Championship | Golf News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lydia Ko had the best round of her LPGA Tour career at the Ford Championship to take a narrow lead after the first round in Phoenix. <\/p>\n

Opening with four straight birdies, Ko closed with two more birdies for a 12-under 60 on a day of extreme low scoring.<\/p>\n

Defending champion Hyo Joo Kim shot a 61, making it the first time since the 2003 Kellogg-Keebler Classic that two players were double digits under par in the opening round.<\/p>\n

\"Hyo<\/p>\n

Image:
\n Hyo Joo Kim is fresh off her win at the LPGA Fortinet Founders Cup<\/p>\n

“I don’t think I’ve ever actually started a round with four birdies, so it was nice to take advantage of the good start and continue that on my back nine,” Ko said.<\/p>\n

“Like every golfer, when things go well you also think about the things that could go terribly wrong. I feel like I stayed patient and was rolling it really well.”<\/p>\n

A moderate start to her 13th season came to life on the Cattail course at Whirlwind Golf Club when the 28-year-old Ko got into a rhythm after a rare putter change and started piling up the birdies.<\/p>\n

She said the idea of 59 – Annika Sorenstam has the only sub-60 round in LPGA history, 25 years ago on a different course in Phoenix – entered her thinking when she birdied her 14th and 15th holes of the round.<\/p>\n

\"Lydia<\/p>\n

Image:
\n Ko holds a one-shot lead after the first round<\/p>\n

But she didn’t hit a seven-foot birdie putt firmly enough on the par-five seventh. Ko finished with two more birdies for her career-low round.<\/p>\n

“That would have been nice to hole that one,” Ko said. “But who knows? Maybe if I holed that one I might not have holed the other two. You can’t think about ‘what if?’ Birdied some other ones that I didn’t expect, so kind of just evens out in that sense.”<\/p>\n

It was the ninth round of 60 or lower on the LPGA, the most recent by Lucy Li at Pinnacle Country Cub in Arkansas in 2024.<\/p>\n

Kim also started on No 10 and shot 28 on the front nine, finishing birdie-eagle-birdie, including a hole-out from the fairway on the par-four eighth hole.<\/p>\n

\"Nelly<\/p>\n

Image:
\n Nelly Korda is in third after the first round just three back from the lead<\/p>\n

Nelly Korda, who opened the year with a 54-hole win in Florida and was runner-up last week in California, holed out from the 18th fairway for eagle in the middle of her round and shot 63, one of her career best.<\/p>\n

They all played in the morning and no one caught them in the afternoon, when temperatures were pushing 38 degrees Celsius.<\/p>\n

Frida Kinhult of Sweden had a 64, the low score of the afternoon, while Jeeno Thitikul, the No 1 player in women’s golf, opened with a 69.<\/p>\n

\"Golf<\/p>\n

Get the best prices and book a round at one of 1,700 courses across the UK & Ireland<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lydia Ko had the best round of her LPGA Tour career at the Ford Championship to take a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":498030,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[5904,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-498029","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-golf","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=498029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498029\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/498030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=498029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=498029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=498029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}