Inside Lydia Ko's tearful journey to Olympic glory and the Hall of Fame

SAINT-QUENTIN-EN-YVELINES, France — Lydia Ko was crying in hotel rooms. Usually, too. Whenever he came home from a disappointing round, tears followed. When he started the tournament with 65 and followed it with 72. When he was ranked 10th in the world and played 110th, he said to himself, What will be at the end of this tunnel?

But this was no 15-year-old Ko, a rookie on the LPGA green. It wasn't the 22-year-old Ko, battling his first wave of career problems. It was the 26-year-old Ko, just last year, at the Staybridge Suites in northwest Arkansas, chasing the LPGA Hall of Fame.

The LPGA Hall of Fame is a different beast. You are not voted for collecting first team awards or for chest beating at a team event. You get it by winning. Victory alone. Each win is worth a point – the main one is worth twice – and throughout the year, single prizes add to your total. Twenty-seven points gets you in, 26 doesn't. (Laura Davies is in the World Golf Hall of Fame, but not the LPGA.) All of this puts accomplished female golfers in a tricky position: the closer you get, the more everyone knows about it and asks about it, the more fun it is. that checkpoint becomes. It played with Ko's mind.

Ko earned his 25th Hall of Fame point after a sensational 2022 season – where three wins elevated him to world No. 1 for the first time in years. Then came 2023 and the worst season of his career. Between March and September, he missed four cuts and had no top 30s. He would go to events and see pictures of himself holding awards and it felt like a distant memory. The HOF rolled around in his head. Some LPGA legends will talk to him and apologize for it.

Seemingly out of nowhere, Ko won the first LPGA event of 2024, earning HOF point number 26. He needed just one precious point, and it almost happened a week later. Needing a birdie to win on the final hole, his shot missed the green and came to rest, strangely, against a bouquet of 27 white roses the LPGA had issued to the green – and a bottle of champagne – one for each Hall of Fame point. From there, Ko found a rare relief, doing the same, only to lose in the finals to Nelly Korda, who would go on to win every tournament she would enter over the next three months.

Ko was angry, to use his own words, but he quickly realized that the words of others emphasized the point. Ko was asked about being on the HOF door for every tournament he entered. You can feel the pain in his responses at the beginning of the year – Florida was a lost opportunity. And for someone who has always talked about retiring at age 30, the deadline loomed large. So much so that Ko began to struggle again. Her mother, Hyeon Bong-sook, and her husband, Jun Chung, intervened.

“I think they made me realize that, hey, even if it doesn't happen, that's only my destiny,” Ko said. “I'm going to do my best to keep putting myself in contention and I'm in a good position going into the final days, but whether it happens or not, I think there's a golf God somewhere that's in control.”

This is where he started writing.

“If I win gold in Paris,” Ko said 17 days ago at the Canadian Open, “I feel like somebody needs to get me a Cinderella slip because it's just a story I couldn't draw.”

It is legendary not only for the Hall of Fame but also for Ko's Olympic journey. Before this week, he was already the most decorated junior Olympic golfer. He won silver in Rio and bronze in Tokyo. He is affected each time in the medal position, representing New Zealand. He gave the silver medal to his father, who kept it in a cabinet of trinkets – everything from whiskey bottles to memorabilia to Olympic hardware. The bronze is with her sister, in Korea, where it was displayed at their grandmother's funeral.

When Ko arrived at Le Golf National, he promised that if he added one medal he lost, he would want the others back. He was clearing out his trophy room – maybe until he did new Medal room for the Medal Slam (an unlikely feat, another 100 years?). It was a sweet thought. An interesting sight. A happy acknowledgment that in the years of One Shot at a timethere is still room to plan your dreams, regardless of the possibility.

“You say those things and until it actually happens, it's not really true,” Ko said. “You know, it's something you keep going back to.”

She started her third Olympics with an even-par 72 on Wednesday before quietly carding a 67 on Thursday, just trying to match Morgane Metraux's impressive eight-under start. When I asked Ko about the Hall of Fame in the middle of nowhere, he responded with a bit of sarcasm. In short, this course is very difficult to think about anything else, but, “It's really good that if I win gold, I can enter the Hall of Fame, and it would stop all these questions, like you, the future.”

He smiled because he knew the question was coming. The closer you get, the more we'll talk about it. But when Ko shot a 68 on Friday to tie the 54 holes, there were no Hall of Fame q's. We were amused by her admission that she deleted Instagram from her phone for a week – during the world's most Instagrammable sporting event – and found inspiration in Simone Biles' book. He even wrote a quote from Biles in his diary as a reminder:

“I will write my fate.”

On Saturday, half of the contestants started to write the end for him. In a competitive course setting, where everyone in the field stressed endurance all week, the pursuit of a podium began to backslide. Hannah Green and Rouning Yin were staring down the bronze as they both hit tee shots in the water. Miyu Yamashita tied Ko early but then played Wedge Ping-Pong from opposite sides of the 9th green. Nelly Korda, trying to follow Scottie Scheffler in his return as the best player in the world, made two birdies in her first three holes, but she skidded off the tee and left her medal hopes in the water, too. Le Golf National was reaching again holding the players. Nary a single score card.

Ko went 11 for 11 under and saw the carnage give him a five-shot lead. But when he doubled 13, his advantage was only three. And when he got to the 15th fairway, it was one. Esther Henseleit was chilling in the clubhouse, feet up in front of the television, at eight o'clock under the division.

Ko's fate is not written with a pen but with patience. He worked through nervy-footers in the 15th and 16th, all while being framed by law enforcement officials. Several times, his playing partners waited for his putts on the next tee box.

“We practice a lot [three-footers] when we train,” said Ko. It was the last thing he did before he left on Saturday. “But you don't realize how important that is until you're in those situations and you have a lot in a row.”

When he was 17, he backed up a shot as spectators raced above, then fired a drive that led to a layup. The final hole at Le Golf National was changed to a par-5 for the ladies, and Ko played it the way it should be for a one-shot lead. Fairway, layup, green.

When the birdie putt fell, his hand was covering his mouth. Tears filled his eyes. Tears were the theme of the day, for bronze medalist Xiyu Lin, burying her face in her boyfriend's shoulder. For Mariajo Uribe, her eyelids swelled up after completing her eagle job. And more tears for Ko, when he finally gets a vision from up the level of the platform, going down the cheek, using his chin as a ramp. While visiting the press tent, he admitted, yes, it's good that some Hall of Fame questions will be on the line. When do we celebrate?

“For it to happen here at the Olympics, it makes no sense,” he said. “I feel like I'm a fictional character in a story. It couldn't be better than I imagined. I've had a lot of thankful things that have happened in my career so far, and this one goes a long way.”

Soon after Ko gave that insight, he was taken to other promises, photos, drug tests, you name it. First, however, he and his team landed at the family's Olympic resort. Inside was a beautiful surprise: 27 white roses this time he was able to pick them up and hold them.