Ko is back (even if she never really left us)
PLUS: Rafa stakes claim to be the 🐐; the Super Smash finals with chip-shot sixes.
Lydia Ko is one of the most fascinating personalities in New Zealand sport.
She’s also a long way from finished. There should be nothing revelatory in that pithy statement yet rewind a couple of years and there was genuine concern that Ko’s days at the sharp end of tournaments were over.
In the four years from 2017 to 2020 she won a single LPGA tournament. Her ranking slipped. Her confidence in coaches and caddies was fickle.
She was talked about as the star who burned brightly, then burned out.
Most of it was desperately unfair. In those years she still earned close to US$3.5 million and only once - in a difficult 2019 - finished outside the top 15 money earners.
Ko was still good, it’s just that as a teenager she was preposterous.
This past week she was back to being excellent, winning her 17th LPGA tournament and pushing her closer to eligibility for the Hall of Fame. She has accumulated 21 of the 27 points required for automatic entry.
Ko is 24!
Those final few holes at the Gainbridge at Boca Rio Golf Club demonstrates why she remains such a formidable player. At the 15th she nailed a long, cambered putt to take the lead, at the 16th she played perfect risk-and-reward par five golf to nail another birdie. At the par three 17th with water on the right, she played to the centre of the green, left of the flag and then, clinging to a one-shot lead on the 18th she… really messed it up.
It’s a fairly standard closing par four but Ko was forced to keep digging holes on the beach as her tee shot found a fairway bunker then her approach found a greenside bunker. Her challenger, Danielle Kang was safely on the green and Ko needed a sand save. She flopped out flawlessly to within a few inches.
To play that shot with zero consequences is a triumph of skill; to play it with a tournament on the line is something much more admirable.
It is tempting to say that Ko is back - but she never really went away.
When you reach a certain age, it’s common to wake in the small hours. Those of us who sleep with our phones on the nightstand - no judgement here - through sheer habit reach out and grab it to see what the time is or, if you suffer from current-event anxiety, to check that Russia hasn’t invaded Ukraine.
If you awoke in the small hours of this morning, your “notifications” would have told you of a seismic event: Rafael Nadal had won an unprecedented 21st grand slam title. If you were anything like me at 4.26am, you would have been thinking, “How in the name of El Cid did that happen?”
My eyelids stopped trying to defy gravity early in the third set. Daniil Medvedev had just claimed a sapping second set in a tiebreaker. His game looked impermeable while Nadal looked out of sorts - a brilliant point would invariably be followed by a bad miss.
If you’ve followed Nadal’s career closely you know never to rule him out, but this seemed more hopeless than most of the lost causes he has turned around. His profusive sweat looked more cloying than ever; the hair was growing visibly thinner by the game. Most of all, his opponent looked dialled in for back-to-back grand slams.
So I was intrigued to watch back and see how he did it. There was no magic formula. No collapse by his opponent. Nadal was just Nadal. Consistently brilliant with an iron will.
“Being honest, one month and a half ago I didn’t know if I [would] be able to be back on the tour playing tennis again and today I am here in front of all of you having this trophy with me, and you really don’t know how much I [fought] to be here.
“Without a doubt [it has] been one of the most emotional ones in my tennis career, and having the huge support that I received the three weeks is going to stay in my heart for the rest of my life, so many, many thanks,” he said upon receiving his trophy.
There are some who believe this title comes with an asterisk given the government-enforced absence of Novak Djokovic, but that’s patently ridiculous as players miss tournaments for all sorts of reasons - in this case you can add self-sabotage to the list.
Djokovic was classy in his acknowledgement of Nadal’s victory…
… as was Roger Federer.
Does it make Nadal, who passed Federer and Dojokovic’s 20 slams, the greatest?
Not for me, but I’m comfortable if you want to designate him the GOAT. I’m holding those 13 French Opens against Nadal because of my inherent bias: clay court tennis bores me.
Federer’s brilliance on grass (eight Wimbledons) and hardcourts (11 slams, five US and six Australian), is more impressive to these eyes. Djokovic’s split (six grass, 12 hard) is nearly as persuasive, but his hardcourt split of nine Australians and three US Opens tells me he’s a much better player at the start of the season than the end.
Plus, you know, Federer’s one-handed backhand.
It’s a hair-splitting debate and I’m guilty of cherry picking the stats that best serve my argument. You could easily engineer a counter-argument for Nadal or Djokovic, or Rod Laver who won 11 slams despite a five-year ban before the Open era.
Please feel free to do so.
In the meantime, Nadal has, as Federer mentioned, earned a rest.
The Wellington Blaze are probably the best domestic women’s team ever assembled in New Zealand. Their demolition of Otago in the Super Smash final was a fitting coronation - or it would have been at least if it was played on the Basin Reserve, as it should have been after an unbeaten tournament.
Sophie Devine provided the bedrock for the victory (92 and 2-14), with useful contributions also from Amelia Kerr (20 and 1-21), Maddy Greene (55) and Leigh Kasperek (3-23).
The women playing a final on neutral territory wasn’t the most annoying part of the finals day however.
That would be the ludicrously lop-sided boundaries in the men’s final. I understand that the priority for the country’s cricket curators is the upcoming women’s World Cup but I find it hard to believe that the showpiece domestic game of the season couldn’t be played on a more centred wicket.
You could use a lob wedge to hit a six on the city side of the ground, while on the other side only the sweetest-times shots had a chance of going on (which is probably how it should be).
There were more sixes (15), than fours in Northern’s total of 217-5, aided and abetted by a Canterbury attack that couldn’t deal with Northern’s array of left- and right-hand partnerships.
It cheapened the final for me, even if the best, most talented side one, thanks to some pyrotechnics from Mitchell Santner (92 not out) and Katene Clarke (71).
Clarke’s talent has been talked up for some time without there being a lot of numbers to back it up. This explosive performance on a big stage will hopefully provide a springboard for big things for the Pukekohe-born batter.
TOMORROW
There were a few other fascinating things to emerge from the weekend, including Ash Barty’s drought-breaking win, some potentially horrifying news involving a high-profile Premier League striker; another classic NFL playoff (the Bengals!) in a season of them, and the impending start of the Winter Olympics.
I’ll cover these off tomorrow, but right now it’s a public holiday where I reside and I’m off to test out a dodgy shoulder by trying to emulate Lydia Ko. Fore!
You were checking your phone at 4:26am?? … whoops.