Ko's late-season decline, according to Leadbetter had nothing to do with the awkward A Swing he'd been drumming into her over the past three years and everything to do with her controlling parents and their desires.
He urged Ko to "take control of her own life, to take control of her own golf game" and said it was "not easy coaching three people".
There's a lot of truth to Leadbetter's comments, moreso than he realises.
Yes, she needs to take control of her game, and she's doing that by getting rid of the A (for Alternate) Swing. In fact, under Gil Hong's tutelage, she was doing that late in the just-finished season and much of her form lapse is due to the fact she was trying to change horses mid-stream.
Ko came into the Leadbetter camp just as he released a book detailing his new swing technique and Ko was a handy marketing tool for the success of the unusual methodology.
Ko won two majors while in the Leadbetter camp. But when she turned professional and ditched childhood Auckland coach Guy Wilson at the age of 16, it's fair to say she was playing golf at a level that suggested majors were all but guaranteed.
The fact she's won two of them in two years is probably par for the course. And in both majors she won, the Evian Championship and the ANA Inspiration, it was her magical, mercurial putting that got the job done. She could have (should have?) won double that many majors, with a playoff loss to Brooke Henderson in the LPGA Championship and a US Open collapse hurting her legacy.
The fact is, results aside, Ko lost some of her swing purity when she went to Leadbetter.
He took the most rhythmic, beautiful swing in women's golf and turned it into a loopy version of what Jim Furyk does: a swing once described by commentator David Feherty as being like "an octopus falling out of a tree".
But you have to remember, Ko ended up in Leadbetter's care because that's what mum and dad wanted: Hong admired the swing of Hee Young Park, a young Korean who worked with Leadbetter, while Tina wanted her daughter's swing overhauled to gain more distance.
Her old swing was not perfect, it had flaws, as Sir Bob Charles has noted. But it had an intrinsic beauty. The A Swing was neither pleasing, nor graceful.
And while golf doesn't hand out any prizes for aesthetics, Ko built her game on rhythm and timing. In implementing the A Swing, she was no longer herself and it ended up hurting her.
After her bout of "Lead poisoning" she now has to go through a detox.
Whether she can break the family ties is another story. The Ko clan is incredibly tightknit, with sister Sura part of her management team.
Until the past few months, you couldn't have questioned her parents - they have a reputation for being supportive without being pushy, nurturing without being nasty.
Under their guidance, Ko had not put a foot wrong and if anything has shown an amazing ability to bounce back from adversity.
Hopefully, she can do it again.
Michael Donaldson is the author of Lydia Ko - Portrait of Teen Golfing Sensation (Penguin Random House)
