Jin Young Ko went into the second round of the BMW Ladies Championship with a nothing-to-lose mentality. Her streak of consecutive rounds in the 60s had come to a disappointing close at 14 and she needed a reset.
It didn’t take long for something else special to come along.
Ko will now leave South Korea an 11-time LPGA winner, and the No. 1-ranked player in the world, as she’s projected to overtake Nelly Korda and regain a position she previously held for 100 consecutive weeks from July 20, 2019 to June 27, 2021.
Ko carded a final-round, record-tying 8-under 64 on Sunday to come from four back of Hee Jeong Lim and ultimately beat Lim with a birdie in her first LPGA playoff by stuffing her approach on the 73rd hole. The pair finished knotted at 22-under 266 at LPGA International Busan.
Ko’s victory marked the 200th on the LPGA for South Korean players.
“This is a tremendous honor,” said Ko. “And I think it’s very fortunate that I am the player, the 200th win player, and I actually think that it’s really fortunate that it was an event held in Korea as well. Obviously, being the player of the 200th win of the Korean player was not a goal that I was working toward, it just happens so that I was really focused and I did my best and this came along.”
Lim, a KPLGA player who missed only two fairways the entire week, finished runner-up for a third time this season. Four players finished tied for third, five stroke back: Lydia Ko, A Lim Kim, Da Yeon Lee and Na Rin An.
Ko now has four LPGA victories on the season, one more than Korda, though the American won a major and Olympic gold. The 26-year-old South Korean now has a 15-point lead over Korda in the Rolex Player of the Year race with only two events left on the schedule. Ko has now won four of her last seven events. She played her last three rounds in South Korea bogey-free and hit 62 of 72 greens.
“The season isn’t over,” said Ko, “so I don’t think I’m going to have a huge party to celebrate. Hopefully I can wrap up the remaining two events in flying colors as well and have a huge party at the year’s end.”
A poor performance at the Tokyo Olympics in August pushed Ko back to her previous instructor and a regimen of work for a month that caused her to skip the AIG Women’s British Open. Ko said she would arrive at the range at 8 a.m. and finish her work around dinnertime, going back and forth between practice and the gym.
“I think that during that time you kind of discover which areas need improvement,” she sid. “And when I was a junior player, there were days where I felt like I was going to die from all the practice. And sometimes, even if you turn professional, I think you need that mindset from time to time.”
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