Lydia Ko, Rory McIlroy moving in opposite directions in world rankings

Lydia Ko, with her “youngest ever” moniker, third LPGA win and first as a tour member on Sunday, and her incredible poise has replaced Rory McIlroy as the game’s “It” golfer.

If she played on the PGA Tour, no doubt her elders would be tapping the unflappable 17-year-old as the “next Tiger Woods,” much as they did when a 22-year-old McIlroy romped to an eight-shot victory at the 2011 U.S. Open for his first of two major championship titles.

Instead, thanks to her unflappable play down the stretch of last week’s Swinging Skirts LPGA Classic in San Francisco and overall remarkable consistency, Ko, for now, will have to settle for being No. 2 in the world rankings. Golf’s most recent prodigy celebrated her “Sweet 17th” (her birthday was Thursday) by outlasting former No. 1, Stacy Lewis, by one shot and bounding up the world rankings to the second spot directly behind last year’s hottest player on the planet, Inbee Park.

“Normally [tournament organizers] would say ‘Sweet 16,’ but I would say it’s ‘Sweet 17,’” Ko, after posting a final-round 3-under 69 on Sunday to get to 12-under for the week, told reporters about turning 17 on the day that Time named her one of its 100 most influential people. “I don’t think I would have any better birthday week ... It’s just a really special week for me.”

McIlroy, on the other hand, though he has played solid if not spectacular golf in 2014 after a miserable 2013, enters this week’s Wells Fargo Championship outside the top 10 for the first time since the end of 2010.

While the idle Woods remains precariously perched atop the rankings ladder, McIlroy has been sliding steadily down the rungs. His playoff loss at the Honda Classic in March dropped the Ulsterman to sixth place, he dipped to ninth after the Shell Houston Open earlier this month, and anchored the 10th slot after a T8 finish at the Masters.

In the meantime, the LPGA’s Park, who appeared to cement her top spot on the women’s side with a brilliant 2013 in which she won the first three major championships, is now hearing footsteps from the young South Korean who resides in New Zealand. While Ko has shown maturity inside the ropes well beyond her tender years, she has made her dramatic rise despite (thanks to?) playing musical chairs with caddies.

Ko, the youngest player to win an LPGA event when she captured the 2012 Canadian Women’s Open at 15, engineered her come-from-behind win Sunday at Lake Merced with her fifth looper (counting her father, who took the bag for the final round of the LPGA Lotte Championship in Hawaii) in 2014. With her “habit for changing caddies as often as most people change clothes,” according to Ron Kroichick, Ko has had Scott Lubin, Mark Wallington, Steve Kay, Dad, and, last week, Domingo Jojola handling the luggage.

Ko and Jojola have a history, as Kroichick noted that the former USF golfer and junior member at Lake Merced worked with Ko two years ago when she competed in the U.S. Girls Junior event at the Daly City track.

While Kroichick cautioned about a “slippery slope” the youngster was navigating, “amid chatter” about Michelle Wie-like helicopter parents, Ko remained as unperturbed about such concerns as she was about sticking approach shots from the rough.

“I never really hired a caddie saying I wanted to go with that person for a whole year,” Ko told Kroichick on Friday after posting an opening-round 71. “I don’t know what it’s like out here and I don’t know the majority of the courses ... I think it’ll take time to find somebody who will suit me.”