Lottie Woad’s win has everyone talking. It has Lydia Ko ready to ask questions

Lottie Woad’s win was the talk of the golf world last weekend. The top amateur turned pro and won the ISPS HANDA Women’s Scottish Open by three shots to join Beverly Hanson and Rose Zhang as the only players to win in their pro debuts.

Woad’s win, along with her T3 at the Amundi Evian Championship and win at the KPMG Women’s Irish Open as an amateur, has impressed everyone from Nelly Korda to Justin Rose. The 21-year-old Woad’s emergence should be a boon to women’s golf as it looks to recapture the momentum it had last year during Korda’s historic stretch and Lydia Ko’s whirlwind summer run to the LPGA Hall of Fame.

But this week is about the present. About what’s possible.

This week, Woad arrives at the AIG Women’s Open at Royal Porthcawl, the year’s final major championship, as the betting favorite, with Korda, Jeeno Thitiful, defending champion Lydia Ko and others all trailing the 21-year-old phenom on the odds sheet.

The spotlight was on Woad last week at Dundonald Links. It will be even brighter this week in Wales. Woad’s emergence has everyone buzzing. But Ko, who will play the first two rounds at Royal Porthcawl with Woad and Lilia Vu, plans to use her time with the up-and-coming star to improve her own game. Ko hasn’t spent any time around Woad, but she has seen her swing, and that’s enough to know that there are things to learn from the young Englishwoman. After all, in golf, age really is just a number.

“It will be my first time playing with Lottie, so I’m excited,” Ko said on Tuesday at Royal Porthcawl. “She’s coming in with a ton of momentum, and I think there’s going to be a lot of people that’s going to come out and watch her. It’s going to be really cool for me to see and see the things that I could possibly learn from her and why she’s playing good. I don’t think the ranking you are — just because you’re a higher-ranked player doesn’t mean that there’s something that I can’t learn from somebody else.

“She’s obviously playing great golf. I’ve seen her swing, and my coach has sent me a video of her swing as well because there’s aspects that I’m kind of going for that she has. Yeah, it will be really cool to just be inside the ropes, pick her brain a little bit.”

News

Ko knows the pressure Woad faces more than most.

Of course, Ko was much younger than Woad is now when she went under the microscope.

Ko’s first LPGA win came at the age of 15 when she won the 2012 CN Canadian Women’s Open. She had already won a Ladies European Tour event at 14. Ko won four professional titles as an amateur and held the No. 1 amateur ranking for 130 weeks before turning pro at 16. She turned pro to much fanfare and hype; all these years later she’s marched to the LPGA Hall of Fame.

Woad is 21 and has spent three years starring at Florida State University. Her experience will be different than Ko’s. Her time spent in college has already given her the tools necessary to succeed in the professional pressure cooker right away.

“I think it’s different in ways because Lottie is older than when I first came on Tour,” Ko said. “She played three years of collegiate golf. She’s been at a lot of those kind of tougher moments. Obviously, it’s different than being an amateur and playing collegiate golf to being a pro, but I think she’s been there and done really well in those pressure conditions, no matter what kind of environment she’s been in. So I think there’s a little bit more experience under her belt than what people probably give her credit for.

“But when I’ve seen the coverage or how she composes herself, she doesn’t seem like she rushes into things or gets like overly emotional. I’m sure that’s going to help her with that transition as well.”

Woad seems to be handling the transition with ease to this point.

Over her last three professional starts, she’s 55 under par with a scoring average of 67.4. Her results? Win, T3, win.

This week will be different. Woad has competed in majors before, but never as the betting favorite. Still, she has had to deal with high expectations for the last 15 months, ever since her impressive victory at the 2024 Augusta National Women’s Amateur. She announced herself there on golf’s hallowed grounds and the anticipation of her arrival on the LPGA stage has slowly built since. She has handled that all flawlessly, using blinders to block out the noise and stick to her process.

For her, things haven’t changed. She’s just playing golf and looking to beat the world’s best on a stage fitting her talent.

“I mean, there’s always pressure obviously, but I don’t think there’s any more than there was,” Woad said on Tuesday. “Like from my perspective, before any of the last few weeks, kind of still was wanting to contend there, and that’s still the aim.”

On Thursday, she’ll start her walk around the famous links east of Swansea and west of Cardiff. She’ll answer questions from Ko and perhaps ask some, too. And then she’ll go trying to add a major championship to her growing young resume, relying on a poise and process that bely her age.

Ko won her first major at 18. Perhaps they each have something to learn from the other.