It’s been some time since we have seen Lydia Ko on the first page of the leaderboard and in the World No. 1 position. But honestly speaking, we are ecstatic that she is up there and back where she belongs. As a super fan of Lydia Ko, we have watched her since she was an amateur playing at the CP Women’s Open and winning the tournament as an amateur. We remember taking a photo with her, not with a smartphone but with a vintage camera. Her dad was caddying for her and graciously volunteered to take the photo of his daughter with us at the pro-am. We followed her at the Kraft Nabisco tournament at Mission Hills when Yani Tseng was World No. 1 and Lydia Ko was still an amateur.
Many years later and when we see Lydia today, we fondly remember her in ponytails and glasses. Lydia was World No. 1 then she fell from grace. She let longtime caddie Jason Hamilton go, ended her Callaway sponsorship, switched coaches and suddenly lost herself. Lydia Ko stopped winning and no one knew why. Even with a new club sponsorship, PXG, Lydia was not winning tournaments.
Enter Sean Foley, Lydia Ko goes back to basics and re-learn her old swing. Suddenly, Lydia Ko is on a comeback. She wins the CME Tour Championship in October 2022, gets married in December 2022, wins the Saudi Aramco Tournament 2023 in February and now sits on World No. 1 position once more.
In Thailand, Lydia is playing very well but so are the other girls such as Nelly Korda, Nasa Hataoka, Pornagong Phatlum, Sei Young Kim and Anna Nordqvist. The leaderboard is packed at the top. It will be interesting to see who ends up winning the Honda LPGA Thailand.