It’s not over yet

ST. ANDREWS, Scotland – Five days ago, 27-year-old Lydia Ko was asked a personal question. When you decide to retire, would you do it quickly, after an epic achievement, or play out the rest of the season and do it later?

The implication was clear. We are in St. Andrews and she was preparing to play a pristine golf course and pose for photos on the Swilcan Bridge, two weeks after winning Olympic gold and punching her ticket to the LPGA Hall of Fame. If you win this week, will you retire?

It was Wednesday and what she said mattered for the next five days. The idea of ​​an away victory floated around the grounds. But on Sunday evening what she had said no longer mattered. Because Co He did won this Old Course Open and she just kept hanging around. Her alarm is set to go off before dawn. On Monday, she has a 5:50 a.m. flight to Boston. The show goes on.

LYDIA KO WILL BE MISSED when she is gone. When that day is scheduled to come, we don’t know. Neither does she – or if she does, she hasn’t told us. But no modern player has contemplated an early end at such a young age as her. Nine years ago, when Ko was just 17, the golf world gasped as she revealed her plan to quit when she turned 30 years old.

A lot has happened since then. A lot. Ko regrets having openly expressed her thoughts on retirement. But the questions persist because those thoughts were once true and have not gone away. She is still serious about leaving the game, and soon… Earlier than most of her contemporaries. What did you think? Retirement of Suzann Pettersen after draining a Solheim Cup winning putt was “so cool, the mic dropped.” Just this week, Ko was asking 36-year-old Jiyai Shin, who left the LPGA Tour 10 years ago at the height of her powers, for details on how she did it. Shin has served as a mentor to Ko, which is ironic because Shin damn near won this Women’s Open herself — finishing tied for second, just two shots back — and then ran to hug Ko before signing off her scorecard. Shin doesn’t want Ko to go anywhere.

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

It is a difficult situation: how I DO do you pull back and retire early, making peace with what you’ve done while still trying to do a little more? Ask Andy Murray, the British tennis player whose singles career ended in a two-day, five-set match at Wimbledon last month after he rushed back to compete after recent back surgery. Like Ko, Murray had floated the idea of ​​early retirement, and he was asked about the R-word so often that he had to beg reporters not to ask anymore. His retirement lost some grace. His mother’s thoughts on the subject made headlines. The same for his opponents. It can get ugly, in the late stages. Both physically and mentally.

As discussed at length after her Olympic glory two weeks agoKo’s 2023 was the worst season of her career. A career-high 20 wins put her on the doorstep of the LPGA Hall of Fame, but she still needed two more points to enter. She struggled near that feat, especially as her form deteriorated, crying in hotel rooms from Arkansas to Oregon.

“I remember missing the cut in Portland last year,” she said Saturday. “I was having barbecue in Texas, but I couldn’t taste anything because I was crying so much with my sister. Speaking of What’s going on? What lies ahead? I feel lost. I don’t know if I will be able to win ahead. You know, all those kinds of thoughts were going through my mind.”

it’s broke through in Januaryin the first event of 2024, the Tour of Champions, pushing him just one point away from the Hall of Fame berth. A week later, a 72-hole birdie would have booked her place in history, but she missed her approach and lost to Nelly Korda in a playoff. That tease — Ko’s ball literally rolled against the celebratory roses and champagne the LPGA had brought to the green — shocked her again. Ko missed several cuts and didn’t finish in the top 10 for four months. How crushing would it be to finish a career one point away from the Hall? But also, how much of a waste would it feel like to grind for years and still come up short? It took two people in her camp to step in and fix it: her mother, Hyeon Bong-sook, and her husband, Jin Chung.

“What I told her was, ‘Hey, if you’re really going to settle down in your career, this is the last time you’re going to enjoy this part of your life,'” Chung said Sunday night. “I think that’s where that mentality came from. I think that it greatly relieved her anxiety.”

To land a spot with the boxes checked off on her 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 turn the future upside down. hers and foresee an even longer future. path

“Someone put it into perspective before I won the gold medal,” Ko said. “They said, ‘Try to think of getting into the Hall of Fame as a gas station on the way to my final destination rather than my final destination. I think for a while that was my goal. I was making it seem like, OK, (the Hall of Fame) was my endpoint, and I think after hearing that, I put it into perspective saying, you know, it’s not like I’m going to walk into the Hall of Fame and say , ‘Bye-bye, Golf’.

“I’m still planning to play. I think it just makes it easier to say, you know, if it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen, and also focus on what’s in front of me. I think these last three weeks were kind of representative of that level.”

Ko’s employee Paul Cormack, who received her bag a year ago, said her boss looked as relaxed at the Olympics as he had ever seen her. And after winning in ParisKo danced around St. Andrews in an equally fresh fashion, even posing for a family photo at the back of the range on Sunday afternoon. When in St. Andrews…

But there were no podiums in Scotland. Only one player would win. And Ko seemed destined for the second.

WHEN SHE’S HIGH THE On Sunday’s 16th, Ko was six under and two shots behind the best player in the worldNelly Korda, who had called her best golf of the week to shoot three-under on holes 7 through 13. But Korda apparently short-circuited the 14th fairway and bogeyed double on a par-5 table. On 16, Ko was sitting on three feet, pausing to take in what he saw on the leaderboard.

“The 3-foot type seemed a little longer at the time,” she said. “Because I thought it was an easy shot, but then I was looking at it from all directions.”

It may have been a complete fluke — the kind of mini-stretch in a wild, wind-swept 72-hole tournament that confirms convenient narratives (ie, that once Ko knew she was in the lead, then her golf came better). However random as it may sound, proof of Ko’s excellence will live on in perpetuity, across the road at Golf Place, at the R&A Museum.

From that nervy three-footer to home, Ko needed just eight shots. On the 17th, she hit a perfect tee shot on her line – The Course embedded in the side of the Old Course Hotel. Then she braved the rain on the side by hitting a low-launch 3-wood into the face of the green, leaving her an easy two-putt. On 18, she chained a wedge to eight feet and rolled in birdie. Her sister Sura, a former player herself, commented: “This means a lot to her. She hasn’t had 18 birds all week.”

For the second time on Sunday, Ko shot to seven under – leaving a nail-biting 30 minutes on the opening green to see if defending champion Lilia Vu could do better. The script created a setting you don’t often see in this game: the clubhead standing by the 18th green, but with an uninhibited view. Between Ko and Vu was a white picket fence and 65 yards of links. Around them were wobbly iPhones and eyeballs. When Vu’s shot missed, Ko threw his head into his hands. She was officially a three-time grand champion.

KO TEAM WAS READY FOR SUBMISSION. Her caddy is a Scotsman; he will enjoy himself tonight. When I met Ko’s husband, he was preparing to crack open his first celebratory beer. But his wife’s party? It won’t be anything special. At least not just yet. A burger for dinner, her Sunday night tradition, before that sunrise flight to Boston. This career continues. But that doesn’t stop it from teaching us things.

“I played here when I was 16 in 2013,” Ko said Sunday night, the trophy on the table in front of her. “I don’t think I have to really enjoy and understand what a great place this is. And now that I’m a little older and hopefully a little wiser, I’ve just come to realize what a historic and special place this golf course is, and it’s honestly been such a fairytale.”

It may sound cliché, but it’s also true. Winning an Open is one thing, but winning an Open at St. Andrews is another thing. The game is built and modded here. Sand was dragged from the nearby beach to create the mounds that define the most iconic golf course on earth. All the greatest sports champions have triumphed here. You see them in the gray stone buildings that line the streets. Cam Smith’s picture is on the wall at the R&A, holding the Claret Jar. Jack Nicklaus’ swing and signature are just around the corner, hanging near the entrance to the St. Louis Golf Club. Andrews.

Ko’s husband, Chung, has spent the week immersing himself in the scene. He is a golf nerd of the highest order and this was his first trip to Scotland. You’d better believe he brought his own sticks, grabbing times at Kingsbarns, on the coast, and Dumbarnie, further down the coast. A round in the Old is high on his bucket list. A week of watching Open Women will do that to you, especially when your bride is a winner.

“When she was playing, I’d go on a tour at the R&A Golf Club and St. Andrews and just watch history,” he said, a smile of pride, joy and who knows what’s next on his face. his. “Just to win in this country is pretty amazing.”

The next time he visits, a familiar face will appear.