A solitary champagne bottle lay chilled in a bucket of ice near the 18th green. To the right, three more bottles lined up in the grass. To the left, a bouquet of red and white roses.
When Lydia Ko’s approach shot on the first playoff hole at the Drive On Championship last January came to rest right next to those flowers beneath the grandstand at Bradenton Country Club, it was a cruel foreshadowing of what was to come.
Ko, who got relief from the flowers, ultimately lost the Drive On title to hometown favorite Nelly Korda, who went on a tear of epic proportions to start 2024. But Ko, the player on the cusp of entering what’s considered the toughest Hall of Fame in any sport, needed one more victory to take her place among golf’s most legendary players.
Alas, she’d have to wait. The flowers and champagne went to someone else.
As commentators began to draw up the perfect scenario for Ko to enter the Hall, the Paris Olympics seemed the most fitting place.
Why? For starters, Ko already owned the silver and bronze medals, and needed only gold to compete the set. No one has gushed more about what the Olympics has meant to golf as much as Ko. She viewed a third appearance in the Summer Games as an important milestone.
Every so often, sport delivers a storyline that hits so perfectly it feels more Hollywood than raw competition. But Ko’s emotional victory at the Paris Olympics proved exceptionally fitting for a career that has rewritten history books and captured fans the world over.
Ko felt like she was living in a fairy tale.
“I woke up, like, was that a dream? Did that just really happen?” said Ko, who pulled an all-nighter after she won and crashed on Sunday.
To win an Olympic gold medal and enter the Hall of Fame on the same day is a feat that, like many records in Ko’s career, might never be matched.
While it looked for a while on Saturday at Le Golf National that it would be a runaway victory, the fight for Ko’s 27th Hall of Fame point went down to the wire on what she called the most difficult Olympic test yet. She won by two over Germany’s Esther Henseleit with a birdie on the 72nd hole.
Gold medalist, Lydia Ko of Team New Zealand reacts on the podium during her national anthem in the Women’s Individual Stroke Play Medal Ceremony on day fifteen of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 at Le Golf National on August 10, 2024, in Paris, France. (Photo by Andrew Redington/Getty Images)
After the medal ceremony in France, LPGA commissioner…
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