The Constant Kindness Of Comeback Kid Lydia Ko

To those who didn’t know her, the moment seemed extraordinary, the kind of thing you tell your buddies for weeks and relay to your eye-rolling grandkids for years.

In the middle of January, 21-year-old Lydia Ko entered the final round of the LPGA’s inaugural Diamond Resorts Tournament of Champions tied for the lead, a position from which she almost always had prevailed. No LPGA player with 10 or more victories had fewer blown third-round leads than Lydia. And this one would have been especially sweet. In the first event of her sixth season on tour, and almost seven years since she became the youngest winner of an LPGA Tour event at the ripe old age of 15 years and 4 months, Ko could have sent a message that cold Sunday afternoon in Orlando, Fla.:

“I’m back, baby.”

The LPGA Mediheal Championship outside San Francisco last April had been Ko’s only victory in two and a half years, part of a career roller coaster that had produced 15 LPGA wins, two major titles, and a slew of “youngest-ever” records. She went in the record books ...