Last Saturday 27-year-old Lydia Ko of New Zealand captured the gold medal following play in the 2024 Women’s Olympic Games Golf Championships in France. For Ko it marked two milestones in her short lived career. It garnered her an Olympic gold medal while also punching her ticket into the LPGA wing of the World Golf Hall of Fame. Lydia has been on the game’s radar since she first turned professional as an ultra-gifted13 year old and yet oftentimes child prodigies can’t sustain that enormous pace. In the case of Lydia Ko. She proved that she could.
Born in Seoul, South Korea in April of 1997, Lydia relocated to New Zealand with her family at a young age. She gravitated to golf at a young age and found immediate success In national amateur tournaments in the Pacific Rim region before her 10th birthday A very solid ball striker, Ko took what many considered a prodigious step forward by turning pro as a 13 year old. She won within her first year on the Korean Women’s Professional Tour and then headed off to Europe where she won seven times on the Ladies European Tour.
Lydia then made an immediate impact upon the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA Tour) and three months shy of her 18th birthday she climbed to number one in the Official World Golf Rankings. She would begin to accumulate quality wins by capturing a pair of early major golf championships, namely the Evian Championship in France in 1917 and the formerly named ANS Inspiration (Dinah Shore) in 1918. Nowadays it is played in Houston and is called the Houton Championship.
Lydia was the LPGA rookie of the year in 2014, was the tour’s player of the year in 2015 and 2022, and won back to back Vare Trophies for low scoring average in 2022 and 2023. In 2022 Ko won the high priced $2 million first place check for finishing atop the CME Group Championship. It has long been acknowledged that the LPGA is the hardest wing of the Hall of Fame to gain entrance and Lydia’s accomplishment is no small feat.
On August 8th Juan “Chi Chi” Rodriguez of Puerto Rico passed away at the age of 89. Chi Chi was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1992, some five years before Lydia Ko was born. Chi Chi was born to laboring parents in 1935 and took up the game as a caddie. He was very talented in his pre teen years as a younger and shot a 67 as a 12 year old. There was not a lot of opportunity in golf for a hard scrabble kid from Puerto Rico in the post World WasrII ear and he decided to enter the American military prior to the Korean War. Following the Korean conflict he played at a lot of golf at miliary complexes and upon his discharge he immediately gravitated toward the PGA Tour in the early 1960. This was during golf’s golden era and the competition was fierce against the likes of Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, Billy Casper, Julius Boros, Gene Little, and Al Geiberger.
While Rodriguez was not the equal of those gifted performers, he did have some degree of success and was able to stay within the top 60 money winners annually. Chi Chi won his first PGA Tour event in Denver in 1962, would win twice in 1964 at the International Open and the Western Open in 1964, and then add victories at the Texas Open in 1967, the Sahara in 1968, the Byron Nelson in 1972, the Greater Greensboro Open in 1973, and at Tallahassee in 1979. As the fates would have it, Chi Chi would turn 50 the following year about the time of the start of the fledging PGA Senior Tour. He would win 22 times on that circuit, seventh most all time.
In his years of retirement Chi Chi did a lot of charitable work and several times partnered up with Mother Therea. As earlier mentioned, he was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame. Time moves on as we celebrate the prime of the career of Lydia Ko, Olympic Gold Medalist, and the passing of the colorful Chi Chi Rodriguez
On a final note, the 42 annual Lake County Amateur tees it up next weekend at Adams Springs Golf Course on Cobb Mountain. There is still room available in the event and entries can be acquired by emailing John Berry at berrygolf@aol.com or by picking up hard copies at regional courses.
