SINGAPORE (AP) \u2014 Jin Young Ko won for the first time in a year at the HSBC Women\u2019s World Championship and hopes this signals a new start from a year of battling injuries that cost her the No. 1 ranking.
\nKo answered an early charge by Nelly Korda, held her nerve during a 58-minute storm delay late in the round and closed with three straight pars for a 3-under 69 and a two-shot victory Sunday.
\nKo now has 14 career wins on the LPGA Tour, including two majors, along with 11 titles on the Korea LPGA. She called this win her \u201cmost important.\u201d
\n\u201cBecause I had a tough year last year and fought with injury, and not good game and mentally tough and everything,\u201d Ko said. \u201cAnd then I won this week.\u201d
\nKo has been at No. 1 in the world ranking longer than any active player, and she was on top of the world when she won in Singapore a year ago. But then she began to struggle with her wrist, and even taking time off for rest late in the year didn\u2019t seem to help. She now is No. 5 in the world.
\nTaking down an familiar foe in Korda only added to the moment.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s always hard to play with Nelly, especially on Sunday,\u201d Ko said. \u201cWe had a lot of times to play in 2021. She hits it farther than last year, I think, so I don\u2019t look at her ball. It\u2019s hard, but love to compete with Nelly.\u201d
\nThe 27-year-old South Korean began with a two-shot lead and opened with a birdie to extend the lead. Korda charged back with three straight birdies and closed to within one shot, only to make her lone bogey on the sixth hole. Ko eventually restored the lead to three shots.
\nKorda closed with a 69.
\n\u201cDidn\u2019t play really well but kind of didn\u2019t really battle as much as I wanted to,\u201d Korda said. \u201dI just made a couple kind of silly mistakes here and there. It was nice to finish with a birdie and be in contention again, be in the final group feeling the emotions and hopefully I can build off of that going into the next few events now in the States.\u201d
\nKo wasn\u2019t paying close attention to the leaderboard and thought she had a one-shot lead when play was halted because of the weather. While in the clubhouse, she saw on TV that she had a three-shot lead with two to play.
\n\u201cOK, let\u2019s make par, play safe. But it was really hard to make par on 17, 18,\u201d Ko said. \u201cIt\u2019s a great honor to defend this title again.\u201d
\nShe is the first back-to-back winner of the HSBC Women\u2019s World Championship and joins Inbee Park as the only multiple winner of the tournament.
\nKo finished at 17-under 271 and earned $270,000.
\nAllisen Corpuz (69), Danielle Kang (68) and Ayaka Furue (67) tied for third at 14-under 274.
\nLydia Ko, who took over the No. 1 ranking at the end of last year and already has won in Saudi Arabia this year, closed with a 74 and finished 12 shots behind.
\nThe LPGA Tour is off for the next two weeks before resuming in Arizona.<\/p>\n
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SINGAPORE (AP) \u2014 Jin Young Ko won for the first time in a year at the HSBC Women\u2019s World Championship and hopes this signals a new start from a year of battling injuries that cost her the No. 1 ranking. Ko answered an early charge by Nelly Korda, held her nerve during a 58-minute storm […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-212236","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212236\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}