Road to the Hall of Fame: The trials and triumphs of Lydia Ko's career

The LPGA Hall of Fame has its youngest member ever after 27-year-old Lydia Ko of New Zealand won the Oympic gold medal on Saturday at Le Golf National. The victory gave Ko the 27th point she needed in the LPGA's demanding qualifying process for the hall.

Ko's career might be defined by consistently being the “youngest-ever” to accomplish numerous records on tour over the last 13 years, including capturing her first LPGA event at 15 and becoming the youngest-ever World No. 1 at 17.

There have been many triumphs and some difficult times, too. Here's a look back at the six eras of Ko's run to the Hall of Fame.

A stunning amateur career: 2012-2013

Ko shattered numerous “youngest-ever” records before ever collecting a paycheck. In January of 2012, at 14, she won the Australian Ladies Professional Golf Tour's 2012 New South Wales Open to become the youngest winner on the ALPG. She almost set the record a year prior, losing the same tournament by a stroke in 2011.

"To be part of history is like a miracle," Ko said after her maiden professional golf tour title. "It's not something you can have by clicking your fingers."

When Ko made her first LPGA appearance less than a month later at the ISPS Handa Women's Open, she had already demonstrated the prospect to be a perennial LPGA talent. In her third amateur start, Ko broke the youngest-ever mark to win on the LPGA Tour only seven months later. She won the 2012 CN Canadian Women's Open at 15 years and four months old, besting Lexi Thompson's previous youngest-ever record of 16 years and seven months. Ko defended her title in 2013, becoming (and remaining) the only amateur to win multiple times on the LPGA.

Ko made the cut in all 15 of her starts as an amateur before turning pro, culminating with a runner-up to then-12-time winner Suzann Pettersen in the Evian Championship during the tournament's first year as a major.

Ko's amateur dominance fueled a then-record 130 consecutive weeks as the No. 1 amateur in the world before turning professional in October 2013. Leona Maguire broke Ko's record for most weeks as the No. 1 amateur in January 2018, while Rose Zhang bested Ko's record for most consecutive weeks atop the rankings in March 2018.

The only barrier to Ko becoming an LPGA member was her age, as she was 16 when she turned professional. The LPGA's rules mandated that players under 18 must petition then-LPGA Commissioner Mike Whan to approve their membership. Ko, then No. 5 in the Rolex World Rankings, was swiftly approved before her professional debut at the 2013 CME Group Title Holders.

"It is not often,” Whan said, “that the LPGA welcomes a rookie who is already a back-to-back LPGA Tour champion."

2014's tone-setting Rookie of the Year campaign

Ko's first year on tour established many habits she followed throughout her career. The talented Kiwi won three times, earning her first professional title at the Swinging Skirts LPGA Classic the week she turned 17. Her constant tinkering with her team began when she fired her 11-year swing coach, Guy Wilson, in late 2013 to start working with David Leadbetter and Sean Hogan. Ko swapped caddies seven times during her rookie campaign, even joking during her Rookie of the Year award acceptance speech to acknowledge her roster of loopers.

"This is the funny part, you see," Ko said. "I want to thank Scott, Mark, Steve, Steve, Domingo, Fluff, Greg, Jason."

Ko separated herself from her 2014 rookie peers with three wins, 15 top-10s, and making every cut in 26 starts to become the youngest Rookie of the Year winner (1,720 points) at 17 years old.

A dominant World No. 1: 2015-2017

Following a runner-up finish at the 2015 season-opening Coates Golf Championship, Ko became the youngest No. 1 in male or female golf history at just 17 years old, topping Tiger Woods’ rise to the top spot in the game at 21 in 1997. Ko would spend 104 of the next 123 weeks as the No. 1, amassing nine titles and two majors during her dominating run as the best player in the game.

But just as she reached World No. 1, the ascendant teen voiced for the first time one of the lines that has stuck with her throughout her playing career­—that she wanted to retire by 30.

"I say my plan is to retire when I'm 30, so I'm not just going to go to the beach and hang out for the rest of my life," Ko said. "There's always a second career that comes along with it, and I'm trying to build up towards it and because I'm playing a sport, psychology links well with it."

Ko's maiden major victory in the 2015 Evian Championship at 18 years and four months old set another record as the youngest major winner in LPGA history. Ko bested Hall of Famer Inbee Park for the 2015 Player of the Year award to become the youngest winner in the award's history by two points. But she narrowly lost the Vare Trophy to the seven-time major champion.

Ko won her second major title the following April in the ANA Inspiration, her 14th career victory three weeks before turning 20, cementing her status as one of the greatest teenagers in golf history. She won twice more on the LPGA in 2016 for her third straight multi-win season, including a silver medal in the 2016 Games.

However, cracks started to show as the latter part of the 2016 season unfolded. Still No. 1 in the world, Ko struggled relative to her lofty standard of play following the Olympics, going five consecutive events without a top-five for the first time since turning professional. Needing a win in the CME Group Tour Championship to sweep the season awards, Ko sputtered on the weekend, finishing 10th to painfully lose the LPGA's scoring average award, again by fractions, to In Gee Chun.

Toward the end of the 2016 season, Ko didn't just tinker with her game–– she nearly tried to reinvent the wheel. In October, she split with veteran caddie Jason Hamilton, who looped for 10 of her 14 victories, including both major titles. Ko swapped out her gear, leaving Callaway for PXG for the 2017 season. And after finishing the season with only one top-five over her final nine starts, she left Leadbetter, whom she worked with for three seasons.

Following the split, Leadbetter pointed a finger at the Ko family, pressing upon the 20-year-old in their split-up conversation that she needs to take more control of her game. His explanation of where she was and what led to the near-eject-all button around her team proved prescient over the following seasons.

"What becomes clear after a few years is that competitive golf is hard," Leadbetter said. "Lydia was oblivious to that when she came in at 15 and won everything. She naturally thought, 'This is fun, I'm really good, this is easy.' But as time goes on, it becomes more of a job. The pressure, the expectations, and the obligations become wearing. And the competition gets stronger. As you push harder, the momentum can start to go the other way. This year, I thought it was telling that Lydia made more double bogeys than she ever has.

"Above all, you need a clear mind."

The down years: 2017-2020

Ko started working with swing coach Gary Gilchrist, who taught fellow World No. 1s Shanshan Feng, Yani Tseng and Ariya Jutanugarn. Despite Ko not winning in 2017, she maintained her No. 1 spot through June until Jutanugarn won the Manulife LPGA Classic. Getting to 108 weeks as the No. 1 in the world, one of three players at the time to accomplish the feat was the main positive of the year. Chatter about her decision-making regarding her team became louder over the season.

During her best finish of the first half of 2017, a T-2 in the Lotte Championship, Ko worked with a caddie she had fired before the start of the tournament. Gary Matthews looped for Ko for nine events and was notified by Ko's then-agent, Michael Yim, before the Lotte started, that he would be fired following the Hawaii tournament.

"I wish her the best, but she's gone through so many caddies, she needs to wake up on caddie-player relationships," Matthews said. "Otherwise, she'll just keep doing it."

Ko's 2017 was the first winless year of her career. Ko deduced that driving distance may have been a key factor, and ahead of the 2018 season she told Golfweek that she started doing cardio, dropping 15 pounds after a pair of seasons where the 5-foot-6 Ko was one of the shortest hitters on tour.

The changes were ineffective off the tee, as she remained buried in the statistic. In 2019, Ko was fifth from the bottom in distance at 245.5.

Ko also changed swing coaches again ahead of 2018, turning to Ted Oh, who also taught 2021 ANA Inspiration winner Patty Tavatanakit. The partnership helped Ko snap her 44-event winless streak, which ended with a playoff eagle at Lake Merced for her first victory in two years. Before the multi-year drought, she had not gone more than 10 starts without a title.

Ko felt the victory, five days after turning 21, answered numerous media critics.

"It's a huge relief because people are like, 'Hey, because of this you're not winning, because of that you're not winning," Ko explained. "Actually, I tried to stay away from all the media and everything that was being said about me and tried to just focus on what was going on in front."

But the 2019 campaign turned into the nadir of Ko's career, as she only finished in the top 10 four times over 24 starts. It was Ko's first year without at least 10 top-10s in her career, and she once again shook up her team by parting ways with Oh ahead of her Mediheal title defense. She asked Sean Foley to look at her swing, and they started working full-time together in the summer of 2020.

Ko only made one start in 2020 before the COVID-19 shutdown. Her world ranking slid to No. 55, a professional low. In only the second tournament after the LPGA’s restart, Ko suffered a brutal loss in the Marathon Classic. Leading on Sunday in the 18th fairway, she went for the par-5 green in two, found a greenside bunker and eventually double bogeyed to lose to Danielle Kang by a shot.

However, the trend of Ko returning to form started with the five top-10 finishes over 14 events in the campaign, and improved driving was a key. She jumped back up to 57th on tour (254.4), impressively gaining nearly 10 yards from the previous season.

Return to prominence: 2021-2022

Ko's early 2021 results mirrored her dominant early seasons. Over her first four starts, she earned a pair of runners-up, including a sizzling 10-under 62 to finish solo second at the ANA Inspiration.

She held the 54-hole lead at the Lotte Championship and redeemed the painful finish from the year prior's Marathon Classic with a historic victory. Ko closed with a seven-under 65 to win at 28 under, the third-lowest 72-hole score in LPGA history. She bested a talented quartet of Nelly Korda, Sei Young Kim, Inbee Park, and Leona Maguire by a whopping seven shots.

Ko noted how different sleeping Saturday night with the lead between Lotte and Marathon were in her victory press conference.

"I told my mom this morning, honestly, before Marathon I couldn't even sleep on Saturday night," Ko explained. "Because even though I had been in that position before because it had been such a long time, I think I was putting a lot of pressure on myself, and I know there were expectations.

"I slept great last night. I just said, ‘Hey, my fate is all right chosen. I'm just going to play the best golf I can today.’"

Ko finished 2021 with 11 top-10s, including earning bronze at the Tokyo Games, displaying the consistency of her first few years on tour. Ko stuck with caddie Derek Kistler for the latter half of 2021, and their working relationship continued into a resurgent 2022.

She found herself on the right side of Vare Trophy fortune to win the award for the first time in eight seasons. Despite Ko being in third on the LPGA in scoring (69.3), neither Nelly Korda nor Jin Young Ko played the required 70 rounds to be eligible for the award.

Ko broke with PXG following her five-year contract in 2022 and started playing with a mixed bag of clubs. She responded with three victories, her first multiple-win campaign since 2015. She caught fire at the end of the season, earning her first title in South Korea at the BMW Ladies Championship in October. Shortly after the victory, she announced she and Foley were no longer working together and started working again with Oh.

The next month, Ko won the CME Group Tour Championship to sweep the season awards and get to 25 LPGA Hall of Fame points, two points shy of earning entry into one of the toughest halls in sports.

"If I could ever go in the Hall of Fame, it would be really cool," Ko said. "Especially with so many of the big names and the legends that are in the Hall of Fame. I'm sure that's going to be all the questions that everybody here is going to ask me next year as well."

It was fitting for Ko that after a season comparable to her dominant World No. 1 era, she returned to the top spot in the rankings two weeks after winning the CME Tour Championship, over five years since she held the spot.

The final two Hall of Fame points: 2023-2024

The start of 2023 was reminiscent of earlier years, as Ko swapped Kistler for caddie David Jones, who was on the bag during her 2021 Lotte Championship title. She won her first start of the season in the LET's Saudi Ladies Open and opened LPGA play with a T-6 in the Honda LPGA Thailand, seeming to set the stage for a Hall of Fame coronation.

Instead, that turned into her only top-10 finish until late October, and Ko's season-long struggles prevented her from defending her CME title because she wasn't in the top 60 in CME points. She lost her spot as the No. 1 player in the world after missing the cut in the Chevron Championship in April—halting an achievement of 125 total weeks in the top spot, third-best ever behind fellow Hall of Famer Lorena Ochoa (158) and 15-time winner Jin Young Ko (163).

Ko swapped swing coaches and her caddie in late October 2023, turning to Si Woo Lee, a longtime on-and-off coach of Jin Young Ko. She hired as her caddie Paul Cormack, who is still looping for her today. The changes worked quickly, as Ko earned her best finish of the season with a third-place effort in her title defense at the BMW Ladies Championship. Two months later, Ko won the inaugural but Grant Thornton Invitational mixed-gender team event alongside Jason Day, and though the victory didn’t count toward the Hall of Fame, it portended a fiery start to 2024.

Ko got within a point of the hall after the first event of 2024, winning the 2024 Tournament of Champions. She almost earned her way in the following week. With a bouquet of 27 flowers sitting next to the 18th green at Bradenton Country Club, Nelly Korda played spoiler with an eagle-birdie finish to force a playoff against Ko. The American won her first of a record-tying five consecutive starts by topping Ko in two extra holes.

A month later, Ko was again in contention again to get into the hall, sharing a three-way tie for the 54-hole lead in the Blue Bay LPGA. But a closing 71 was no match for American Bailey Tardy’s electric closing 65.

Despite the two early opportunities to win her way into the Hall of Fame, Ko fell into a mid-season swoon. The run of contention across the Pacific was Ko's last top-10 until the CPKC Women's Open in late July, where she finished T-8 to take momentum into her third Olympics.

Her gold medal in Paris gives Ko yet another superlative that no one can match—three different medals over three Games, making her the de-facto youngest to do so, a fitting nod to a career packed with extraordinary achievements.