Lydia Ko takes second-round lead

Lydia Ko has turned on the jets. And she’s not slowing down.

Ko shot a second-round 66 to vault into the clubhouse lead at the 2024 Kroger Queen City Championship outside Cincinnati on Friday. Coupled with her Thursday 67 and Ko was at 11 under heading into the weekend.

This comes on the heels of four straight top-10 finishes, including a win at the 2024 AIG Women’s Open at St. Andrews. Oh yeah, she also won the gold medal at the Paris Olympics.

“I obviously came off an amazing three-week stretch in Europe,” Ko said. “I wanted to make sure that I kind of came back to the ground and work on the basics and the things I’ve been working on the past few months. Winning at the British and playing well at the Scottish [T-9] and winning the gold in Paris, it wasn’t just the work I put in the week before. Every week it’s been incremental improvement. You hope to pull it off one week, and it happened to be two of the biggest weeks in my schedule this year.”

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Her win at the Olympics secured the final points she needed for entry into the LPGA Hall of Fame. Her victory 15 days later in the Women’s Open, her third career major, was icing on the cake. Now she’s seeking her 22nd LPGA win and third this season.

“The golf course is getting firmer just because it is pretty warm out here. Being smart with the club selection off the tee and just knowing which ones I should be aggressive and which ones I should be a little bit more conservative,” she said. “I feel like I set myself a good plan going into the week so that’s what I’m going to stick to. I know there is still a lot of golf to be played so just focus on me and I think that’s the biggest thing that I’ve been doing well these past month or so. So just stick to that.”