 |
|
World’s number one female amateur golfer, South Korea-born Lydia Ko during her practice session at the 34th Queen Sirikit Cup Asia-Pacific Ladies Invitational Golf Team Championship in Singapore. New Zealand’s record-breaking teen Lydia Ko vowed to avoid the mistakes of her “idol” Michelle Wie as she plots her path to professional golf — and targets a medal at the 2016 Olympics |
Ko is tipped by her handlers as a future world number one after she became the youngest amateur, male or female, to win a professional event aged 14 years and 280 days in January, breaking the mark of Japan’s Ryo Ishikawa.
But Ko, who turned 15 on Tuesday at the Queen Sirikit Cup in Singapore, said unlike Wie she was in no rush to turn pro, and wouldn’t try to juggle full-time golf with her studies. She was also cautious about competing in men’s events.
“She (Wie) became pro really early and she decided to do school work at the same time, which is two hard things to do,” Ko, already the world’s top amateur, said in an interview at Tanah Merah Country Club.
“She also played a few men’s tournaments on the men’s tees as well. So she went a bit of a different direction to what I want to do, although she is my idol.”
America’s Wie, swept along by a wave of hype and endorsements, turned professional aged 15 in 2009 but has won only two tournaments since, and none for nearly two years.
The glamorous Wie, who like Ko is of South Korean background, has also flopped in her much-publicised attempts to take on the men in professional tournaments.
But Ko, while praising Wie, said she plans to turn pro in about two years on the US LPGA Tour and also wants to attend college in America, where students can leave for periods to concentrate on their sporting careers.
“I think doing school work and playing as a pro is going to be way too hard,” she said. “I think she’s amazing but I don’t exactly want to go the way she did.”
Team captain Libby Steele, New Zealand Golf’s performance manager, also said level-headed Ko’s career was shaping up very differently from Wie’s.
“Michelle Wie turned professional very young. It’s very difficult for someone outside the US system to do that,” Steele told AFP.
“I don’t think Lydia has aims to do that because the negatives of that are pressures on a very young brain. She certainly aspires to be like those people, but she doesn’t necessarily copy how they got there, and nor does her coach.”