ST. ANDREWS, Scotland – Jiyai Shin won her first AIG Women’s British Open 16 years ago. At age 36, she’s the winningest player left in the field on the Old Course, where she leads defending champion Lilia Vu by one stroke, World No. 2 Nelly Korda by two and the LPGA’s newest Hall of Fame member, Lydia Ko, by three.
Sunday in St. Andrews will be a generational battle. Shin has won more than 60 titles worldwide. She left the LPGA at the peak of her game in 2014, taking her talents to Japan, where she’s now won 30 times. Her career began close to home on the Korean LPGA, where she won 21 times, and kicked into another gear when she won 11 times from 2008-2013.
A rookie on the LPGA in 2009, Shin set goals for the next decade, but reached them all in short order. She struggled to find her next step and motivation.
That’s when she decided she needed a change, and joined the Japan LPGA to be closer to family. She worried about disappointing her fans, but then she met new fans.
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“I had a great decision,” said Shin, who wants to be a mentor to younger players the way so many were for her all those years ago.
Count Ko, 27, among those who look up to Shin, marveling at her 6:30 a.m. practice round earlier this week and the way she pushed herself in the gym.
It was Shin who played alongside Ko when she won the Canadian Women’s Open at age 15, a dozen years ago.
“I think that takes not only a lot of work ethic but passion towards the game in what she does,” said Ko, who called Shin’s decision to leave the LPGA in her prime courageous.
Ko comes into Sunday’s final round a little lighter than most, given that she played her way into the Hall by virtue of a storybook victory at the Paris Olympics. That’s not to say she isn’t still “greedy” about wanting to win more, but there’s certainly nothing left to prove.
“It’s definitely nice to know that I can go back to my room, and even if I have a bad day, there’s a gold medal, you know, waiting for me,” said Ko, who smiled and then quickly added, “and my husband.”
Korda closed with a birdie to stop the bleeding on a back nine that included two bogeys and a double. She led by as many as three on a sunny but windy day at the Home of Golf but dipped to third after a disappointing 75.
A victory at the Old Course would change the narrative on what’s been a challenging summer for Korda, who won six times in the first half of the year, including a major.
The last player to win seven times in a season, including multiple majors, was Yani Tseng in 2011. The last American player to do so was Kathy Whitworth in 1967.
Tseng’s 2011 British Open victory at Carnoustie was the last time a player won in back-to-back years in this championship. Vu has a chance to pull off the same on Sunday as she vies for a third career major title.
After managing to avoid the bunkers in the first two rounds, the 2023 LPGA Player of the Year had to take her medicine on the back nine Saturday.
“I was definitely a brat about it,” said Vu, “because I thought I hit a good shot, and then it happened to roll in.”
She credited her caddie for getting her mind right.
Vu missed several months of competition earlier this year with a back injury and does all that she can to combat the cold. On Friday, she went back and forth from the cold plunge to the sauna and found the new routine helpful, along with plenty of hot chocolate.
Last year’s victory came at Walton Heath, a parkland course, outside London. The gritty Vu got a kitten to celebrate, naming him Walton. There’s already a second bribe from her father in play that if she wins another major, she can get a second cat.
She’s already thought about names, noting that she’d get a girl this time around and name her Andie.
Ko, who gushes about her puppy Kai when asked, looks at what happened at the Paris Olympics as something that was too good to be true. Imagine then, how’d she’d feel about topping it off with a victory at the Home of Golf, snapping a major championship drought that stretches back to 2016.
Would she wave goodbye on the Swilcan Bridge? Ko, who has long said she wouldn’t play past 30, was asked about a walk-off retirement at the start of the week.
“I think you just have to listen to yourself,” said Ko. “The way Suzann (Pettersen) did it after holing that putt at Solheim, I mean, she couldn’t have finished her career on any more of a high.”
The same could be said for Ko, who could end her incredible career in the place where golf began. Doesn’t get more epic than that.