Newly crowned World No. 1 Lydia Ko would love to add the HSBC Women’s Champions title to a list of career milestones that is fast defining her as the most talented golfer of her generation.
Breaking world records is familiar territory for the 17-year-old from Auckland, New Zealand, with ‘youngest person ever to win a professional golf tour event,’ ‘youngest person ever to win an LPGA Tour event,’ and ‘fastest player to reach US $1 million in career earnings,’ among some of those held to date. Still, landing ‘Asia’s Major,’ as the HSBC Women’s Champions is often referred, would be up there with the best, as Ko explained:
“I would love to win the tournament. The world’s best players are there and all the people that have played really well in the last 12 months. The champions of champions are there, so everybody is going to be super excited and everyone’s going to hope to have a trophy at the end of the week, but I’ve just got to play my own game. It’s definitely a tournament I would love to win.
“I felt like last year I did leave a couple of shots behind, so I do feel like I can win on that course, I just really had lots of fun there, so I think obviously for me – it being my second time playing here, I’ll be a little bit more used to the course,” added Ko.
Speaking about her latest world record of being the youngest player of either gender to be ranked No. 1 in professional golf – a feat that Tiger Woods had to wait another four years in his career to achieve at 21-years-old – Ko added:
"It’s pretty awesome and a huge honour to be in this position and I’m very proud to be here too. It’s always been a goal to become world no. 1 and to be in that ranking right now is awesome. But you know, I’m really going to go out to every tournament and have a good result there and not think about the rankings because, if somebody else plays really good and wins a couple of tournaments, it’s really out of my hands. I’m just going to enjoy it, and enjoy being here. It’s definitely fun.”
Ko’s move up the Rolex Women’s World Golf Rankings coincides with the announcement by tournament organisers that thisyear’s HSBC Women’s Champions at Sentosa Golf Club in Singapore will feature the top ten ranked players in the women’s game, adding So Yeon Ryu and Hyo Joo Kim from South Korea, former winner Karrie Webb from Australia, and American Lexi Thompson to a lineup that already includes defending champion Paula Creamer, Ko (1), Inbee Park (2), Stacy Lewis (3), Shanshan Feng (4), SuzannPettersen (5), and Michelle Wie (6).
With one of the most stringent qualification criteria of any golf tournament in the world, the 5 – 8 March annual showpiece prides itself on fielding a truly elite player lineup consisting of LPGA Tour champions as well as top ranked players. But it looks as though the 2015 edition will raise the bar to a level that few tournaments outside the majors can compare with, presenting the Singapore public with the mouth-watering prospect of the very best in the women’s game battling it out for honours in Singapore’s own backyard, in what is being billed as an international festival of golf.
The eighth edition of HSBC Women’s Champions continues to attract the best in women’s golf with 63 of the world’s elite female golfers competing to be crowned ‘Champion of Champions’ in the US $1.4 million purse tournament at Sentosa Golf Club from 5 – 8 March 2015. (*Rolex Women’s World Golf Rankings, 9 February 2015)
For more information on the HSBC Women’s Champions 2015, please visit thetournament website at http://www.hsbcgolf.com/womens.
