Lydia Ko leads Canadian Open
BY Bruce Young | LPGA Tour | 2012 Canadian Women's Open | Round Two | 25 Aug 2012
15 year old New Zealander Lydia Ko continues her amazing run in North America in 2012, sharing the lead at the LPGA Tour’s CN Canadian Open, two weeks after winning the US Amateur Championship and seven weeks after finishing as the leading amateur at the US Women’s Open.
Ko led with Korean Chella Choi when she finished her morning round on day two of the event at the Vancouver Golf Club and while several golfers still had an outside chance of joining her in the lead she is likely to be well placed as the tournament heads into the weekend.
The Auckland based Ko has spent more than two months in the US and was asked after the round how she was balancing the life of a full time golfer with being a teenager.
“Yeah, I’m definitely missing out on teenager activities,” said Ko. "I’d love to go out on Saturday night with my friends and watch a movie, but that happens really like once a year or a couple times a year. Last year I had wrist surgery and that’s when I could do a little bit of teenager stuff, but it doesn’t happen that often.
“Now I’m realizing golf is like a full time job, and I’m missing a lot of school. At this age I should be going to school every day. But I see my report, for the first time I was there for I think two weeks, so my absent days are like 75 days or something.
“So this is a full time job, and I guess, like me, I don’t have anything to lose playing this tournament. I’m just here for experience. But the professionals on the other hand it’s about how much money they’re going to get by placing.
“I go back home on October 3rd, so I’ve still got a while to go, and I left in June. So I’m not at home much. Our school is divided into four terms. I’m going to miss the whole of three, and when I go back home in two weeks I’ve got Cambridge exams. It’s pretty tough. It’s hard to catch up, and I need to pass my exams to go to the next A level academic. It’s hard to catch up, but I’ll enjoy it when I go.
Ko will also be playing at the British Women’s Open and the World Amateur Teams Championship in Turkey in September.
The question was asked about her plans for playing collegiate golf.
“I graduate in 2014, so I’ve still got a bit of time left to think over it. It’s like coincidentally they both turned professional early. I just like them separately, but I never knew that they turned pro early. I mean, they wanted to know it because they really enjoy the sport and wanted to turn pro and everything.
“But, yeah, I don’t want to hurry anything. Like I said, I enjoy school a lot. Personally, I think you need to study and it will help with your game. Like if you do math, it will help you read the lies or whatever. That’s what my mom says so, yeah. That’s why next year I said okay, I’m going to drop math, and she’s like, no. I thought, oh, okay, maybe not.
“But, yeah, it’s nice. I want to go to college definitely and somewhere in California, and I want to go to Stanford. I like Michelle Wie because she went to Stanford. I don’t want to go to Stanford because she went there. It’s just I like Stanford, and she actually went to Stanford, so kind of that direction.
“I’m noticing as the years go by Stanford is such an academic school, and I actually talked to a girl, Shelley Watson at the U.S. Amateur how she felt because she goes and studies at Stanford. She said it’s actually doable. So I’m actually really thinking again. Because people are saying there is so much homework, there is so much this, and you can’t have a lot of time to practice golf.
“There are many great schools out there, and I think that’s the great thing about the states because in the country there is a college in pretty much every corner, and in California it doesn’t snow, so I want to go there.”
First round leader and world number one Yani Tseng was unable to follow up her good start to the event , her three over par round of 75 having her five shots behind the lead halfway through day two.
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