Lydia Ko’s gas-station mindset, Rory’s broken driver, Korda’s ‘mess up’

Welcome back to the Monday Finish, where this column should be about a 10-minute read — or nine if you’re at altitude. Folks, let’s get to the golf news!

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GOLF STUFF I LIKE

Lydia Ko and a summer too good to be true.

Before we move on to the next tournament and the next news cycle and the next thing and before we — and she — adjust to her new golfing reality, let’s zip back in time a few weeks to Lydia Ko, who was staring down the Olympics and dreaming of what could be.

“If I win gold, I know I can get in the Hall of Fame that way,” Ko said ahead of her tilt at Le Golf National. “So that would be a hell of a way to do it.”

Ko was already golf’s only two-time individual medalist in Olympic history, having claimed silver in Rio in 2016 and bronze in Tokyo. She seemed comfortable kicking around the idea of winning gold and completing the trifecta because, as she said, it was too good to be true.

But then it happened. Ko outmaneuvered the field. She putted the lights out. She won her third medal — the gold — in a sport where no other individuals have two. The reality matched the expectation: It felt too good to be true.

Just over a week after that triumph, Ko arrived at St. Andrews for the AIG Women’s Open with the pressure off. What effect that had it’s impossible to say, but she admitted freely just how nice it was to not have to answer questions about the Hall of Fame. She swung freely and scored freely and worked her way into contention through three rounds. And on the back nine on Sunday the 27-year-old Kiwi played like someone with nothing to lose; her splendid chip from the rough long of 16 and her 3-wood in the worst weather of the week at 17 and her gutsy putt for birdie at 18 were overwhelming evidence that she was up for the challenge. She didn’t look afraid of losing but instead like a golfer eager to seize a tournament with meaning at a course with meaning.

And after Ko posted the clubhouse lead at seven under, I appreciated the way she stood at the practice green adjacent No. 18, hitting some putts and glancing over at the finishing hole, where her competition tried in vain to catch her. She looked comfortable with the result either way. But through the lens of history, through the lens of her career, there was still so much at stake.

In sports it’s easy to keep track of accomplishments. It’s easy to look up the fact that Ko won the Evian Championship in 2015 and the (renamed) Chevron Championship in 2016. It’s only when you hear Ko asked about it that you remember she was a teenager then. That she’s lived lives since then.

“Honestly, like the only bit I remember of winning the Chevron Championship, the ANA at the time, was jumping into Poppy’s Pond and holding my nose going down because I didn’t want to get water up my nose,” Ko admitted at the Old Course. “That’s about it. It feels like it was such a long time ago.”

When Lilia Vu‘s final birdie try came up short, the surreal streak continued. If that last win had been too good to be true, what was this? “I feel like a character in a fairy tale,” she said post-round.

Before Olympic gold, before this latest major, before she’d been guaranteed entry into the Hall of Fame and was still left to wonder if it would ever happen, Ko said she was plagued by the mindset that it loomed as an end destination, something to reach or not. But that was the wrong way to chase it; the last mile of any trip can often be the longest. It was helpful, Ko said, when a friend gave her a different visual.

“They said, try to think of like getting into the Hall of Fame as like a gas station on the way to my final destination and not like my final destination,” Ko said.

She tackled the final day at St. Andrews like a golfer with a full tank. And she leaves with an open road ahead — and plenty to be proud of in the rearview.

WINNERS

Who won the week?

Lydia Ko won her third major championship and her first in eight years, edging out a high-powered group of contenders: Incredibly, each of the top six players on the final leaderboard has visited World No. 1 in her career.

Keegan Bradley won the BMW Championship, completing a surreal seven days in which he went from last man in (Tom Kim’s 6-6-6 finish got Bradley to No. 50) to big-time winner. Bradley is now up to No. 4 in the FedEx Cup entering East Lake. He’s likely to be picked for the Presidents Cup team he was supposed to help captain. Everything has changed.

Frederic LaCroix won the Danish Golf Championship, claiming the first DP World Tour title of his career thanks to a final-round bogey-free 65.

Matt McCarty won the Albertsons Boise Open, his third victory of the Korn Ferry Tour season, earning him a battlefield promotion to the PGA Tour for the fall season.

And Stewart Cink won his first PGA Tour Champions event by four shots after closing with a 6-under 66 at the Ally Challenge in Grand Blanc, Mich.

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NOT-WINNERS

So close, and yet…

Nelly Korda headlined a three-way tie for second alongside Lilia Vu and Jiyai Shin. While Vu was closest at the end — she was the only one with a putt to tie the lead at No. 18 — it was Korda who held the outright lead on the back nine before a devastating third shot at the par-4 14th. Instead of setting up a birdie look she was left with a tricky chip from a bad lie; that led to another chip which was followed by a missed short putt. Double bogey. Korda didn’t shy away from that failure. But she also recognized that this was by far her best career showing at the Open Championship as well as her best showing since her epic win streak came to a close this spring.

“Listen, it’s golf,” said the World No. 1. “I’m going to mess up and unfortunately I messed up over the weekend twice in two penalizing ways coming down the stretch. Theoretically that’s what kind of cost me the tournament — but I played well. I played solid. I even fought after that. I’m going to take that into the next coming events.”

Adam Scott earned his second runner-up finish of the summer, and while he, too, acknowledged the agony of second place — “10, 11, 12 kind of blew it for me there. I was in position with wedges on every hole and made three bogeys. That’s almost unthinkable, really,” he said — he also took solace in the week’s positives.

“You know, you kind of grind all year and then finally the last four events my game has really turned around and looked solid,” he said. “A lot can happen in a few weeks out here, and all of a sudden I’ve gone from a very frustrating year had I not finished well to now feeling pretty pleased with myself.”

As he should. Scott jumped from No. 41 to No. 14 and will tee it up at East Lake just a handful off the lead.

SHORT HITTERS

Who’s in (and out) of the Tour Championship, in brief.

With his win, Keegan Bradley jumped from No. 50 to No. 4 in the FedEx Cup. But there were others with dramatic moves, too:

Brian Harman is OUT. He’s the first man out at No. 31. And while I lack the technical skills to bore you with specifics, he was projected at No. 26 before he played the 18th hole on Sunday. After making double bogey, he’s headed home.

Justin Thomas is IN. He’s the last man in at No. 30. When Thomas began the week at No. 22 it seemed extremely unlikely he’d slip outside the East Lake number; as it turns out he needed a Sunday 68 — the day’s only bogey-free round — to climb to T39 for the event and 30th for the playoffs.

Alex Noren is OUT. With three holes to play he had designs on winning the tournament. Instead he made three consecutive bogeys, the worst of them at the par-5 17th, by far the easiest hole on the course. As a result he slipped to T9 and well outside the playoff bubble.

Tommy Fleetwood is IN. As he should be. The Olympic silver medalist is No. 12 in the world ranking and No. 9, according to DataGolf; he would have been the best Tour member not to make it to East Lake. After a T5 finish that won’t be an issue.

ONE DUMB GRAPHIC

The Ballfrogs are on a roll.

ONE SWING THOUGHT

Golf in the mountains.

Colorado native Wyndham Clark loved being home for the week — but even he acknowledged the strangeness of competing at 7,000 feet.

“I mean, it’s hard to play at altitude,” he said. “That’s going to be the common theme that everyone says, outside of whoever wins this tournament. But even then, they’ll probably say the same thing. We control our ball to the yard 90 percent of the time, and then you come here and it’s like 40 percent of the time. It’s just a guessing game. There’s a lot of luck involved at altitude golf.”

ONE BIG QUESTION

Are the fellas reaching the ends of their rope?

I’m not here to throw a pity party for the best golfers in the world playing a little more golf for a lot more millions. But there was something strange going on in the mountain air at Castle Pines — something that had Scottie Scheffler losing his mind, Rory McIlroy snapping his driver, Matt Fitzpatrick getting snippy with an official and Hideki Matsuyama WDing while in solo second place.

I liked the phrasing of Xander Schauffele, who said he was having to “dig deep in my little patience bucket.” And perhaps the best explanation came from Tommy Fleetwood, who said he was proud of how he’d battled the dog days of August.

“At this point in the year, I think you start to see so many guys starting to get frustrated, which is so easy to do,” he said. “I think, again, it’s important to sort of have a good sense of where you are and how you feel. Coming towards the end of anything, you’re obviously trying to push that bit more. It’s always quite a long season bunched up, but again, you want to be there until the end, and I think playing in these events is always a good thing.

“There’s definitely times when you get frustrated and that’s showing a bit of mental tiredness, if you like, but I felt pretty good, and I felt like especially this weekend, I had a good handle on things because last week in Memphis [where Fleetwood hit it well but was last in the field in putting] was so frustrating.

ONE THING TO WATCH

Lydia Ko’s finish.

Check out Lydia Ko‘s round in 60 seconds — but pay particular attention to that closing stretch. And the next time you’re standing over a putt, try to channel the confidence she exuded on No. 18. No guarantee you’ll get the same result…

NEWS FROM SEATTLE

Monday Finish HQ.

I’m en route to East Lake for a few days of Tour Championship coverage and to remember what 94 degrees and humid feels like. I’ll check in from there. In the meantime, thanks for reading! We’ll see you next week.

Before you go, a quick request: If you like the Monday Finish, subscribe for free HERE to get it in your email inbox!

Dylan Dethier welcomes your comments at dylan_dethier@golf.com.

Dylan Dethier

Golf.com Editor

Dylan Dethier is a senior writer for GOLF Magazine/GOLF.com. The Williamstown, Mass. native joined GOLF in 2017 after two years scuffling on the mini-tours. Dethier is a graduate of Williams College, where he majored in English, and he’s the author of 18 in America, which details the year he spent as an 18-year-old living from his car and playing a round of golf in every state.