Lydia Ko becomes youngest ever to be ranked world #1 golfer

New Zealand’s Lydia Ko has made golf history becoming the youngest ever player to assume the title as the world’s number one ranked female golfer.

The LPGA Coates Golf Championship in Florida was won by Korean Na Yeon Choi, but her victory was somewhat overshadowed by the history-making ascension from Ko.

A tie for second place was enough for 17-year-old Ko to leapfrog Inbee Park and become the youngest female to ever hold the title as the world’s number one ranked golfer. And she only turned professional 15 months ago!

Ko played the tournament without her glasses – opting to play in contact lenses for the first time and it clearly didn’t affect her game.

“Today I was just trying to focus on hitting good shots and that’s all I can really do out there,” she said after the tournament.

“Obviously I didn’t win at the end of the day, but I still became world number one and that’s pretty awesome.”

The previous youngest woman to hold the world number one ranking was Jiyai Shin who was 22. Tiger Woods holds the men’s record – he was 21 when he became the world’s number one golfer for the first time.

Few golf experts ever doubted she would one day be ranked as the best in the world – but no one would have been bold enough to predict she would sit so comfortably in the professional world and top the rankings this quickly.

Ko will be playing the 2015 ISPS Handa Women’s Australian Open at Royal Melbourne, February 19 – 22.

One thought on “Lydia Ko becomes youngest ever to be ranked world #1 golfer

  • Lydia KO does not deserve to be ranked number one for several reasons, and I will name a few. First off, the Rolex World Rankings is a joke, and should not be taken serious or accepted as an honest process to determine rankings. This thing was set up to come hell or high water, Lydia KO was going to be named # 1, so they could boast the youngest player in history to reach $1. Everyone else was measured over a two year period and KO was measured for just 15 months. Your rankings are based off the number of tournament played over a two year period. This gives a player the divider needed to calculate points. KO’s divider is 43 and Parks and Lewis is in the high 50’s. Using this method, KO receives more points than Lewis or Parks for a win. Actually, Lewis and Parks has to play better than KO just to keep pace with her points total. Very unfair process. The only fair way to rank KO is count the number of tournaments she could have played in the 9 months prior to her turning pro, and add this number to her divider. Having a two year divider is the only fair way to rank a player. If they did this correctly, it is obvious KO would not be ranked #1 in the world. She may or may not ever get there, but at least it won’t handed to her because of her age, and agenda of the LPGA and ROLEX.
    LPGA and Rolex has lost credibility, and if they keep this crap up they will start losing viewership. Right now I don’t want to even watch Lydia KO play. It’s is not her fault, be she seams to such it up, even though she knows it;s wrong.

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