KO LEADS THE WAY
Charley Hull, who is nine under par and one behind Lydia Ko going into the final round of the HSBC Women’s World Championship at Sentosa, had a start to her day which no-one would have recommended.
She woke up, she felt sick “and then I threw up.” So far so hideous but, typical Charley, she “kind of” got her head together. Others might have downed a couple of pills but she went out and did a personal best of 26 mins in a 5K run, knocking a minute off what she had achieved earlier in the week.
If you are wondering how she was feeling by the time she arrived on the first tee, the answer was that she was dripping with confidence before going on to play good solid golf, adding a 68 to earlier scores of 69 and 70.
“Chatty Charley”, as she is sometimes known, was excited at the thought of playing alongside Ko in the last round. “I so like playing with her…She’s a really nice person, so down-to-earth, so kind. I’ll just go out there, have a little chops (Charley for chats) and just play golf.”
If a little differently delivered, Ko, who has returned rounds of 69,70 and 68, was no less flattering about Hull. “We’ve been paired a bunch of times. “I’m excited to play with her. We’ve kind of grown older together, first seeing each other when we were 15 or 16. So to see how far we’ve come and how much we’ve grown as golfers and people is exciting.”
That Ko and Hull are lying first and second, with Jeeno Thitikul third speaks volumes for the course. It has got tougher just as the three of them have improved, with the bunkering and the pin positions calling for exquisite accuracy.
“You have to play smart round here and I think I’ve been doing that pretty well,” said Ko. “I made the odd mistake here and there, but instead of thinking about it I focussed on my next shot.”
She has “a ton of experience” under her belt from playing at Sentosa and her mindset for the last round is no different than the one she brought to bear in her winning round at the AIG Women’s Open at St Andrews last year. “At St Andrews, I wasn’t really looking at where I was on the leaderboard. I was just trying to play one hole at a time and I did that really well.”
Where Ko shone with her approach shots, Hull was wowing everyone with her massive drives. She won the Lexus Drive of the Day on Friday, and she won it again on the 13th today. However, she should have been given another Drive of the Day award at the 16th if such a thing had been allowed. When no mentioned was made of the length of her drive at the 16th, you had to think they had run out of tape.
Thitikul, the first to get back to base, was busy blaming the greens for the fact that no-one was under par when there was a roar from the par-five 16th as Ko holed from six yards to go to 10 under par.
Though Thitikul’s was the low round of the day – a 66 to match the 66 she had in the final round when she finished in 8th place as a 15-year-old amateur— she said she was pretty worn out and that her energy level was around the five out of ten mark.
It wasn’t just about playing the golf it took to win twice so far this season but what goes with it. “After you win,” she explained, “you get tired because of media interviews and long lines of signing autographs.”
However, she didn’t look like a player who was taking aim on the kind of high final round score which would keep her out of the limelight.