Monday, August 27, 2012

What does Ko's win say about the LPGA Tour?

Fifteen-year old Lydia Ko, who won the LPGA Tour's Canadian Open on Sunday, wasn't born when Tiger Woods won the 1997 Masters.

Make you feel old?

Make you wish you could hit it and putt it like the kids these days?

Ko became the youngest player in LPGA history to win a tournament, breaking the record set last year by Lexi Thompson. Ko was brilliant, making seven birdies on Sunday, to pull away from Jiyai Shin and Stacy Lewis, two of the tour's best players.

Afterward, she talked about wanting to buy a dog and her goal of attending Stanford, both of which she may eventually get though she couldn't take her $300,000 winner's check because she's still an amateur.

Ko's victory raised an interesting question:

What does it say about the LPGA Tour?

It's a tour in desperate need of a jolt of relevance and Ko's victory at least pulled some of the attention away from Nick Watney's victory in the Barclays and the musical chairs being played for the final four spots on Davis Love III's U.S. Ryder Cup team.

Without a dominant player at the moment - Yani Tseng's sterling game has dulled slightly - the LPGA needs someone or something to bring it into focus. Maybe it's Ko.

She recently won the U.S. Amateur and now she's an LPGA Tour winner. It says everything about her potential and perhaps too much about the LPGA Tour at the moment.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why don't you get off yer arse Junior and adviocate for an LPGA event in Charlotte.

Thank you very much.

Anonymous said...

It says the LPGA tour is becoming women's tennis...except Asian women dominate.