Lydia Ko recorded her 18th LPGA victory at BMW Ladies Championship in Wonju, South Korea. She posts an excellent final round (-7) to defeat a world-class field, producing rounds of 68, 68, 66, and 65 for a total score of 267 (21 under par), which brought her the career-first South Korean victory.
“I was able to feed off good momentum. I had a couple of stretches where I made consecutive birdies. For me, the big turnaround was my birdie on 10. To be honest, if it didn’t go in, I had a pretty hefty par putt coming back. I was able to feed off that. I normally don’t do first pumps, and I did a couple of first pumps on my back nine because I knew how much every single of those putts would count”, said Lydia Ko. “I feel so proud to be born in Korea. Because of that I really wanted to win here. It’s not only just a place that I’m born, but a lot of my family is still here. This week my relatives are here, my direct family is here and I wanted to win it for them as well. To be able to do that this year in front of a lot of them, it means a lot”, added she.
The American golfer Andrea Lee (-17) was four strokes behind in second place, followed by the Korean golfers Hye-Jin Choi and Hyo Joo Kim (-16) and the American Lilia Vu (-16).
Lydia Ko is a Korean-born New Zealand professional golfer. A former number-one-ranked woman professional golfer, she achieved the top ranking on February 2, 2015, at 17 years, 9 months and 9 days of age, making her the youngest player of either gender to be ranked No 1 in professional golf.