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.
