Lydia Ko remembers the feeling on the first tee in Rio in 2016, the first year of golf’s return to the Olympic Games.
“It was a good thing that I had a driver in my hand, with a lot of surface area,” she recalled on Friday in Paris. “Any other club it might have been a little questionable. That was probably the most nervous I’ve actually been.”
She remembers standing on the podium at the end of that week, too, accepting her silver medal and trying not to cry.
“I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I can’t cry if Inbee [Park] is not crying and she’s the gold medalist, and she’s listening to her national anthem. I think internally, I was a bit of an emotional mess,” Ko said.
She got on the podium in Tokyo, too, finishing with a bronze medal that made her the most decorated Olympian in golf history. That fan-free experience wasn’t the same, she said, Covid protocols changing the feeling of the Games. So Ko arrived in Paris looking to soak in a proper Olympic experience — and pick up her third medal in the process.
Now, three rounds in, she’s in gold-medal position. And she’s there thanks to a freed-up mindset and a red-hot putter.
Ko made six birdies on a blustery Friday afternoon at Le Golf National to shoot 68 and move from third into a tie for first. She was able to lean into the atmosphere, she said — both the challenging conditions and the biggest crowds yet in a week defined by them.
“The French fans and all the fans that have been here have been absolutely amazing,” Ko said. “It’s a scene that I’ve never experienced before, and it’s cool to be a part of the thousands and thousands of people that are here to turn up and kind of celebrate sport and celebrate women’s golf as well.”
On Sunday they may just have the opportunity to celebrate Ko.
It’s a lofty thing to contemplate, the idea of adding gold to her existing haul of silver and bronze. What do you do in between rounds, now that dream is approaching reality?
“I deleted my Instagram for the week because I didn’t want other things to distract me,” Ko said. “Obviously that shows how much time I’m on my Instagram. I was like, what do I do?”
She turned to Netflix instead, and to someone to the story of someone to whom she could relate: Simone Biles.
“I watched her documentary called Rising and it was so inspirational,” Ko said. “I think as an outsider, we never know like what the person is going through. I think for her to have been so vulnerable, I think it inspires a lot of people and it inspired me.
“I loved a few of the quotes that she said so I kind of wrote it on my yardage book. It was awesome to hear literally the greatest of all time as a gymnast — and maybe potentially one of the best athletes of all time — to kind of show her story was awesome.
“So yeah, I don’t watch documentaries very much. But I watched it and I loved it.”
What was the quote that made it to her yardage book? Something simple.
I get to write my own ending.
“Sometimes we get carried on about things that we can’t control, and if I can do a good job of the things that I can control, you know, the rest is out of my hands,” Ko said. “But I always say, like, I want to like be the one that’s determining my fate and my ending and how I end my career, my round, and that just like sunk in with me a lot.”
Biles had a terrific Paris Games, winning gold in the women’s All-Around competition and leading Team USA to gold as well. Ko, representing New Zealand, hopes to follow in those footsteps.
“Yeah, it gets at the way I would I imagine it or dream it to be; that’s the perfect quote to kind of say that.”
Ko knows nothing is certain. Scottie Scheffler won last weekend’s men’s competition despite falling a half-dozen shots behind going to the back nine.
“I think this golf course, doesn’t matter if you’re four, five, six shots behind. You could potentially be there, and I think tomorrow is meant to be warm and pretty still conditions in regard to the wind. So someone could shoot a very low score,” she said. Still, she wouldn’t trade places with anyone.
“I know that all I can do is do my best out there and hit quality shots and see where that put me and hopefully I get a good chance at it because the Olympics doesn’t come around every single day, definitely not. Not even every single year.
“So to be in this kind of position is awesome. I’m excited to embrace all of this.”
Dylan Dethier is a senior writer for GOLF Magazine/GOLF.com. The Williamstown, Mass. native joined GOLF in 2017 after two years scuffling on the mini-tours. Dethier is a graduate of Williams College, where he majored in English, and he’s the author of 18 in America, which details the year he spent as an 18-year-old living from his car and playing a round of golf in every state.
