Evian Championship: Dame Lydia Ko reflects on 10 years since first major win

Dame Lydia Ko has fond memories of the Evian Resort Golf Club.

Winning on the LPGA Tour as a 15-year-old amateur in 2012 made her one to watch, but it was on the course in Évian-les-Bains, France, that she surged to what was then the biggest win of her career.

In 2015, Ko claimed her first major championship when she won the Evian Championship by an impressive six strokes. At 18 years old, she became the youngest player to win a major on golf’s top tour.

A decade later, Ko is a 23-time winner on the LPGA Tour, including three majors, an Olympic gold medallist and has secured her place in the Hall of Fame.

As she prepares for the Evian Championship this weekend, she said she hoped to add to those accolades, with her defence of the Women’s Open in Britain also on the agenda later in the month.

“I would love to win another major. It would be pretty cool to win; obviously be really cool to defend the AIG Women’s Open.

“It would be awesome to win this 10 years later. I didn’t think of it as 10 years until [commentator] Grant Boone mentioned it to me yesterday. He was like, ‘Is this true?’ I was like, ‘Now that I calculate it, yes, it is true.’

“It’s hard. Paul, my caddie, asked me today how many events I won more than once, and I think it’s only been three or four out of the 23. It would be nice to add this one as a repeat.

“I just love coming here for so many different reasons. This is always going to be a special place for me, regardless of how I play. I think it would just top my experience I’ve had in France.”

Reflecting on her time at the top so far, Ko, still only 28, said she felt as though she was now in her third generation of the LPGA Tour.

It was harder to win on tour now, she said, but there was a reason for that.

“[I’m] not saying that it wasn’t difficult to win then, but I think there is more diversity on the leaderboard; more players from Japan than I’ve ever seen, from Thailand and from the US, where I think it was a little bit more saturated when I first came on [the] tour.

“So it just makes winning more difficult, but at the same time more fulfilling when you do accomplish it. It’s impressive. I was telling my pro-am partners ... every single player out here is good. It’s like sometimes the marginal differences are luck and your condition. It’s just very small things.

“When you see scores, it may seem like drastic differences, but everybody is good, and that’s why we’re all out here.

“I think that’s why there are so many players out there still practising and grinding. If you just stay at the same spot, at one point, even if you were at the higher side, you’re going to keep coming down. I think it’s been awesome to see that inside the ropes and see how much our tour has grown.

“I’m excited to see where the LPGA can go and, yeah, at some point I’m going to be stepping away from this game. I think it’s only really going upwards from now.”

Christopher Reive joined the Herald sports team in 2017, bringing the same versatility to his coverage as he does to his sports viewing habits.