Thrill to watch classy Ko rediscover her best golfing self

The putt rolls downhill on the 15th hole, the golfer with tees in her hair watches. The crowd is quiet and expectant. They adore this woman.

- Rohit Brijnath

The heat feels like a blacksmith's forge. Somewhere there's a girl holding a beautifully made sign with a message on it. LYDIA, Go, Go, You Got This.

And Lydia Ko has this. Not just the putt, which is 63 feet long, and ends when the ball rolls into the hole with a sigh at the HSBC Women's World Championship. No, it's more than that. What Ko, champion on March 2, has got - last year and now this year - is her game back.

Greatness, Ko's caddie Paul Cormack says later, can't be owned. It's only rented. This game is elusive, it's made of too many moving parts, it plays havoc with the mind. There was a time, Ko tells The Straits Times on March 2, "I just didn't know if I was ever going to win again.

"There was a point for a couple months (in 2023) where I couldn't even break even par. When you're in that kind of time, you're not even thinking about winning, you're trying to make cuts. And that's obviously a very different mindset to be in."

Ko, 27 now, was a kid with poise and polish, youngest at 15 to win an LPGA title, youngest at 17 to be world No. 1. In 2015, she won five events. In 2016, four. But greatness is like the wind, it slips away. From 2017-2021, she won only twice and no one is harder on athletes than themselves. Where did the magic go?