Kim Hyo-joo of South Korea celebrates after winning the Ford Championship on the LPGA Tour at Whirlwind Golf Club at Wild Horse Pass in Chandler, Arizona, on March 30, 2025, in this Getty Images photo. (Image courtesy of Yonhap)
SEOUL, March 31 (Korea Bizwire) — As Kim Hyo-joo stood on the 18th fairway in a playoff at the Ford Championship in Arizona on Sunday (local time), pursuing her first LPGA win since October 2023, a ladybug landed on her ball.
Knowing it was a symbol of luck, Kim didn’t chase it away.
“I was in a rush to play, but that ladybug wouldn’t go away. So I was waiting for it to fly away,” Kim said, after beating Lilia Vu of the United States with a birdie on that playoff hole at Whirlwind Golf Club at Wild Horse Pass in Chandler, just southeast of Phoenix. “It’s supposed to be a good sign.”
It just happened that the win was Kim’s seventh on the LPGA Tour, but she wasn’t just lucky to get back in the winner’s circle. She poured in nine birdies during the final round and hit 13 of 14 fairways en route to an eight-under 64, erasing her four-stroke deficit against Vu at the start of Sunday. Kim, after needing just 24 putts to cover her final 18 holes in regulation, made the clutch six-foot putt on the first playoff hole after Vu had missed her attempt from 15 feet away.
Kim, 29, said the win will catapult her to strong performances the rest of this season.
“People around me sometimes say I’m getting old,” Kim said. “With this event, I think I can go do better.”
She admitted to feeling “a little bit stressed” over not coming through with a victory for about a year and a half, and finally ending that drought lifted some weight off her shoulders.
Kim, who earned US$337,500 with this victory, said she had fond memories of playing in Arizona, where she had won her first stateside title in 2015 at the JTBC Founders Cup.
“As soon as I arrived, I really had good thoughts,” Kim said. “Now that everything got connected again, it’s pretty amazing, and I will have a wonderful memory about Arizona.”
Kim will head over to Las Vegas for her next tournament, the T-Mobile Match Play, starting Thursday, but not before she savors her long-awaited win.
“Next week, it’s a whole different course, whole different game,” she said. “So I’m going to enjoy this wonderful feeling and enjoy the moment.”
(Yonhap)
