Lydia Ko Notches 10th Win With Heavy Heart

Here is the summary from LPGA communications after Lydia Ko won the Fubon Taiwan Championship by nine, her tenth LPGA Tour win coming at nearly 3 1/2 years younger than Nancy Lopez's 10th win.

The victory returns the 18-year-old to the No. 1 ranking and the top spot on a list of incredible players under the age of 25.

Ko did it playing with a heavy heart after learning of the death of Patsy Hankins, New Zealand Golf President who was also one of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club's first female members.

Ko dedicated the win to former New Zealand Golf President Patsy Hankins who passed away earlier this week and someone Ko considers a mentor in her junior days.

“And I think I was really playing for Patsy this week,” said Ko. “I think just hearing that on Friday morning broke my heart. She was such a huge factor into my life in my junior golf. To hear that she had passed away was very hard to hear that before you’re entering a round. But kind of just played for her the last three days, and I’m so happy that I can bring this win to her and her family.”

Ko had posted this tribute to Instagram earlier this week:

And this selfie, thanking the sponsor right off the bat.

ABC Gets Back In The Golf Business With LPGA Finale

I'm hoping the Love Unlimited Orchestra's "Love Theme" is employed at some point to highlight ABC--ABC!--carrying the final round of the LPGA Tour's CME Group Tour Championship on November 22nd. Golf Channel will carry the first three days.

Granted, it's the ESPN golf team, but this is an encouraging sign for golf that a solid broadcast team is going to get a few more reps even as the worldwide leader cuts costs to please parent company Disney. With ABC not carrying the NFL or MLB, could the network that was so pivotal in cultivating golf on TV be an outlet for more LPGA or PGA Tour events down the road?

From an LPGA Tour release:

Tom Rinaldi will call the play on ABC’s telecast, joined by the team that called the RICOH Women’s British Open Championship on ESPN: Dottie Pepper, Judy Rankin, Andy North and Billy Kratzert, led by coordinating producer Mike McQuade - will cover the final round for ABC. The first three rounds will be broadcast on Golf Channel, with ESPN producing the telecasts.

Alison Lee: The Stories She Can Tell At UCLA!

Alison Lee is still enrolled at UCLA, so the 20-year-old LPGA Tour rookie should have some fun stories to bring back to Los Angeles now that she's part of a winning Team USA effort in the Solheim Cup. And I'm pretty sure she'll never expect any putt to be good ever again. A good thing.

Jay Coffin at GolfChannel.com on the nutty week the rookie experienced at the Solheim Cup, which started out with food poisoning, included an incident that probably made her feel like she had more food poisoning, and ended with a 3&1 win over Gwladys Nocera.

She's good fun on Twitter, too.

Dottie: Entitlement Attitude Plaguing America's Women Golfers

As the Solheim Cup is about to start, we're reminded again on the eve what makes these matches fun: emotions run high! Including from the outside, where first Jaime Diaz and now a former assistant captain, player and a confirmed patriot in Dottie Pepper is providing some nice bulletin board for our ladies on the eve of the matches.

Team events bringout the emotion!

Pepper writes:

As an assistant captain, I saw an American team two years ago that was completely outplayed by a brilliant team from Europe, but the stage was set, I believe, by an attitude of privilege -- the negative and synonymous descriptions listed above -- by some key players. Players who needed to set the tone for a let's-get-the-job-done week, rather than an attitude of inconvenience and entitlement. It's not about face paint and time set aside for team manicures, or whose stilettos cost more and are a quarter-inch higher, or hair stylists and makeup artists.

Zing!

This could pertain to any team match, male or female:

It's about conserving energy for a weeklong marathon, being positive about preparations, carving out the time to make sure you understand the intricacies of the golf course and the rules that will be in play that week. It's about doing what your captain asks, even if it means staying off social media during a weather delay. It's about doing things that are not normal -- not your own selfish routine -- because the Solheim Cup is anything but normal.

"Why Haven't We Gotten Behind Lydia Ko?"

That's a question posed by Shane Bacon and it's a legit one as the golf community fawns over Jordan Spieth while the outside sports world yawns at both of these talents.

There are legitimate reasons to see why Ko-mania hasn't overtaken the game: she just won the fifth major that wasn't a major until recently and she's really a quality person whose only discernable neuroses was in caddie hiring, hardly making her unusual. But as we know, the world struggles with people who are pretty much all-around likeable.

That said, Bacon makes a statement that hits home, even for this Young Tom Morris fanboy.

She's already the greatest teenage golfer, male or female, in the history of golf, and now she's winning the biggest of the big with final rounds that match what Johnny Miller did at Oakmont back in 1973.

We as golf fans, and sports fans, need to do better on this front. Ko is making history. It's our responsibility to start paying attention.

He's right. She is the greatest teenager the game has ever seen.

Spieth is a nice guy too for an old man in his early 20s. He's super accessible and yet network cameras zoom right by him because Tiger Woods is in the same corporate box.

Is it that we want our superstars to be a little weird, a little mysterious and a little dark?

Are Spieth and Ko just too nice for the rest of the sports world to take notice?

How's that for a rhetorical question?