Stop us if you’ve heard this one, but Lydia Ko will kick off her LPGA season with major changes to her entourage.
Lydia Ko starts another season by making more coach and caddie changes
Ko is not afraid to revamp her golf support system completely, as she proved last year and again before she starts her 2018 season.
Photo by David Cannon/Getty Images
The former world No. 1, who overhauled her golf squad late in the 2016 campaign, will take the tee Thursday at the Women’s Australian Open under the tutelage of a new instructor and with yet another caddie on her bag, according to the LPGA.
Gone from her team are Gary Gilchrist, whom swing coach Ted Oh replaces, and bagman Peter Godfrey, removed in favor of Jonny Scott, who has toted the luggage for several LPGA players, including Laura Davies and Karrie Webb.
After last year’s wholesale changes, Ko failed to add to her cache of 14 tour wins for the first time in her professional career. Along the way, she lost her No. 1 world ranking in June, after a run of 104 weeks at the top.
Now 20 years old, the former teen phenom ranks 10th in the Rolex Rankings and has acknowledged that last year was an “emotional roller coaster ride.”
Winless since the Marathon Classic in July 2016, Ko also conceded her self-assurance took a hit last season.
”Confidence is a huge thing,” Ko told The Advertiser recently. “During the middle of last year I felt I lost a bit of confidence.
“Talent-wise it does not change week-in, week-out, it is really confidence and how positive you are,” added Ko, who said she had trained in the U.S. during the past month. “I took time off to regroup and rest physically and mentally.”
Oh is Ko’s fourth coach, taking over from Gilchrist after a year. Gilchrist, who followed New Zealand’s Guy Wilson, Ko’s first coach, had supplanted David Leadbetter at the end of the 2016 season.
Oh, who in 1993 qualified for the U.S. Open at the age of 16, was a high school competitor of Tiger Woods in Southern California. He made six starts on the PGA Tour, the last one in 2000 when he missed the cut at the Pebble Beach National Pro-Am.
Scott will be Ko’s 11th caddie since she turned pro in 2013 (check out the New Zealand Herald’s compilation of those who have looped for her).
The two-time major champion will get back in the swing at 7:44 a.m. local Adelaide time on Thursday off Kooyonga Golf Club’s 10th tee, playing alongside three-time tour winner Katherine Kirk and 2014 Women’s British Open victor Mo Martin.
