Lydia Ko, 2014 LPGA Rookie of the Year

Apr 3, 2014; Rancho Mirage, CA, USA; Lydia Ko on the ninth hole in the first round of the Kraft Nabisco Championship golf tournament at Mission Hills Country Club. Mandatory Credit: Kelvin Kuo-USA TODAY Sports

Was there ever any doubt about this one? The LPGA announcement that Lydia Ko has been named the 2014 Louise Suggs Rolex Rookie of the Year simply formalized what most women’s golf fans knew was a forgone conclusion as we watched Lydia Ko and Stacy Lewis stroll down the fairway side-by-side at the Pure Silk-Bahamas last January. Lewis anticipated the award when she opined in her post-round interview that before long Ko was “going to be beating all of us.”

More from Golf News

Ko’s made a fine start toward fulfilling Lewis’s prediction and by her steady march through the 2014 season she’s certainly affirmed Mike Whan’s decision last November to admit her to the LPGA Tour. Here it is in a nutshell:

She’s entered 24 events this year — not counting the Lorena Ochoa Invitational and the CME Group Tour Championship, still to be played — and she’s made 24 cuts. She’s finished in the top-10 thirteen times. If we were talking about baseball, we’d be looking at something like a .542 “finishing average.” She’s won two events — the Swinging Skirts LPGA Classic in April and the Marathon Classic in July.

Ko’s played in all five Majors and stayed in the top of the field in two of them, finishing T29th at the Kraft Nabisco Championship, T15th at the US Women’s Open, T29th at the RICOH Women’s British Open, 3rd at the Wegman’s LPGA Championship, and T8th at the Evian Championship. It was a more-than-respectable rookie year performance.

How’s Ko feeling about all this? Typically modest but utterly self-confident, she accepted the achievement as a natural and predictable step on her career path.

"It’s really been a dream rookie season for me. I learned so much and am glad to have achieved some of my goals along the way. It’s an honor to have my name now etched alongside such amazing players and legends of the game on the list of Rookie of the Year winners. – Lydia Ko"

Measuring Up Against the Big Girls

Already the youngest winner in LPGA history – Ko broke Laura Baugh’s 41-year-old record by winning the Swinging Skirts LPGA Classic in April – and the Tour’s youngest millionaire, the 17-year-old is also the youngest Rookie of the Year in history. If that wasn’t enough, with $1,564,962 in the bank and two events remaining, she has a chance to eclipse Yani Tseng’s 2008 rookie year earnings record of $1,752,086.

Ko, who won two LPGA events as an amateur, has two victories this season, the most for a rookie since Paula Creamer won twice in 2005.

Just as is the case with other sports, a number of Rookie of the Year winners from the past 20 years have fizzled out following their big first seasons, but the smart money is on Ko to follow the path of recent award winners like So Yeon Ryu (2012), Azahara Munoz (2010), Tseng and Creamer and continue on with her success from the year.

Ko is ranked third in the Rolex Women’s Golf World Rankings and has an outside shot to challenge Stacy Lewis and Inbee Park for the Rolex Player of the Year award. Only Hall of Famer Nancy Lopez has won both awards in the same season (1978), so if Ko was able to finish strong and do that, it would be a monumental accomplishment.

Ko has a chance to win the $1 million bonus at the CME Group Titleholders Championship next week, a boost to the bank account any Tour star would covet.

Since the award was established in 1962, nine winners have gone on to take their place in the LPGA Tour and World Golf Halls of Fame: Joanne Carner (1970), Amy Alcott (1975), Lopez (1978), Beth Daniel (1979), Patty Sheehan (1981), Juli Inkster (1984), Annika Sorenstam (1994), Karrie Webb (1996), and Se Ri Pak (1998). This week’s tournament host Lorena Ochoa, who claimed the honor in 2003, will soon join that list, and many believe Ko has a shot to someday do it as well.

For The Good Of The Game

Lydia Ko has earned her stardom through hard work and years of training. But her singular honor this year came last April when she was named by Time Magazine as the youngest of the 100 most influential people in the world. Annika Sorenstam made clear the source of Ko’s influence:

"[Lydia Ko is] exceptionally talented, mature beyond her years and well liked by golf fans and competitors alike. She is responsible for sparking increased interest in our sport not just in her native South Korea and adopted homeland of New Zealand but also among juniors across the globe."

Ko’s potential to lead and inspire will, I predict, surpass and transcend that of an earlier, prowling, growling, chest-beating, testosterone-driven young Tiger who for a time also drew fans to The Game.

Home/Golf News