In the long arc of an old sport, official systems to designate the world's best golfers haven't been around long. Before the start of the Official World Golf Ranking for men in 1986 or the Rolex Rankings for women that debuted 20 years later, hearts and minds made the call. For greats such as Harry Vardon or Mickey Wright or Jack Nicklaus -- and anyone watching them at their finest -- complex calculations weren't available and, frankly, weren't necessary.
Given golf's increasingly global nature, though, the rankings serve a purpose. They determine who plays where and attempt to organize a game without borders. For the most part, they affirm what we're feeling and thinking. They can be motivation for players and conversation for fans.
This weekend is one of those times when the Rolex Rankings seem to matter a lot, spotlighting a special golfer and affirming an era in which younger players are central to the plot. When the divisors had settled, history was made.
By earning a share of second place Saturday at the LPGA's season-opening Coates Golf Championship in Ocala, Florida, Lydia Ko will move from No. 2 to No. 1 in the world when the new rankings are released, displacing Inbee Park. The 17-year-old from New Zealand is the youngest female or male ever to be No. 1 -- by a lot.
Jiyai Shin had been the youngest woman at 22 years, 5 days when she overtook Lorena Ochoa in May 2010, while Tiger Woods was 21 years, 5 months and 16 days when he became No. 1 in 1997 not long after winning his first professional major. The shockingly large mark by which Ko sets the record for becoming No. 1 coincides with the sense of inexorability that it was bound to happen sooner rather than later.
Whatever the time, golf has had no lack of precocious players, going all the way back to Tom Morris Jr., who captured his first Open Championship at the (still) record age of 17 in 1868 and won three Open titles as a teenager. Johnny McDermott (19 years old in 1911) remains the youngest U.S. Open champion. Morgan Pressel (18 years, 10 months, 9 days old when she won the 2007 Kraft Nabisco) is the youngest female major champion. Although she didn't win, Michelle Wie had an unprecedented -- and somewhat underappreciated -- run in the majors as a 15- and 16-year-old with five top-five finishes in eight appearances during 2005 and 2006.
Yet Ko, whose family moved from her native South Korea to New Zealand when she was a little girl, is unique. She has won with an astounding maturity, breaking through at the New South Wales Open in early 2012 when she was 14, then the youngest of either gender to win a professional tournament. Seven months later, only 15, Ko won the Canadian Women's Open, surpassing Lexi Thompson by more than a year to become the youngest winner of an LPGA event.
Ko has won four other LPGA events, including the CME Group Tour Championship to end 2014 that also allowed her to claim the $1 million Race to the CME Globe season points title. The youngest winner of the Louise Suggs Rookie of the Year award, she has 23 top-10s and hasn't missed a cut in 43 LPGA events.
"To be the kind of player that can do this at such a young age, first of all you have to love the game, which she tells us she does," Golf Channel analyst Judy Rankin, an LPGA pro herself at 17, said during the Coates' final-round broadcast. "And you have to have a certain kind of demeanor. Lydia Ko has that demeanor -- she has a wonderful evenness about herself. Nothing seems to faze her."
Ko's equanimity was tested during a Saturday of twists and turns at Golden Ocala Golf and Equestrian Club. Leading by one stroke starting the day, she holed long birdie putts at Nos. 1 and 2 to increase her advantage to four shots. Ko and Na Yeon Choi -- in the final grouping with Ha Na Jang -- would battle the rest of the round, the outcome hinging on the turbulent final holes.
Choi took the solo lead at 17-under on No. 14 and looked poised to increase it on the next hole after sticking her tee shot on the par 3 to 5 feet. But after Ko sank an improbable 60-foot birdie putt, Choi three-putted for bogey, putting Ko back on top by one.
The lead didn't last long, though, when Ko drove it into a bunker on the 17th hole, then hit a poor approach that hit a tree and caromed deep into the woods. Following a poor pitch on her fourth shot, Ko had to sink a 15-footer for double-bogey to stay only one back of Choi. Needing a birdie at 18 to force a playoff, Ko, from a poor lie, bladed her wedge over the green. She tied with Jang and Jessica Korda at 15-under 273, one behind Choi, the news that she would climb to No. 1 despite losing the tournament not your ordinary consolation prize.
Is it a gift that comes with a burden, especially since Ko won't turn 18 until April 24?
Life near the top wore down Se Ri Pak, the South Korean icon who was an inspiration for Ko. It took a toll on Yani Tseng, who was No. 1 for 109 weeks in 2011 to 2013 but has slumped badly since. Having just turned 26, she has fallen to 85th in the world and hasn't won an LPGA event in nearly three years.
"She's too young," Ko's mother, Tina, told GolfChannel.com's Randall Mell on Saturday when asked about her daughter becoming No. 1. "You just worry about what she feels."
Ko will sure need her evenness, as Rankin so wonderfully termed it, now more than ever, to try to enjoy the perch as well as the journey, which has been so stunning to this point. There is no reason to believe she won't, but as shown by the closing moments of the Coates Championship, golf can be very unpredictable. More than a golf swing or certainly the pronouncement by a computer, the heart and mind of an amazing young woman will chart the course from here.
