Olympic champion Lydia Ko takes the lead after third round of HSBC Women s World C ship

SINGAPORE – Going into the final day of the HSBC Women’s World Championship, Lydia Ko finds herself in a familiar position – at the top of the leaderboard and in contention for another title.

A four-under 68 in the third round of the US$2.4 million (S$3.2 million) event on March 1 saw world No. 3 Ko take the outright lead on 10-under 206, a stroke ahead of England’s Charley Hull (68) at Sentosa Golf Club’s Tanjong Course.

This is the 20th time in Ko’s career that she has been in the lead after the third round, with the New Zealander winning nine of the previous 19 times.

But Ko is not thinking too much about the possibility of claiming her first win in 11 appearances in Singapore, which would bring her LPGA title tally to 23.

Instead, she will just be focusing on herself, an approach that has helped her on some of golf’s biggest stages, including the 2024 Women’s British Open, which she won to end an eight-year Major title drought.

Recalling her experience at St Andrews, where she was three shots off the lead after the third round, the 27-year-old said: “I wasn’t really looking at where I was on the leaderboard, I was just kind of trying to putt one hole at a time and I did that really well.

“That’s a really good mindset to be in, in any circumstances.”

The Paris Olympic champion and three-time Major winner, who had a flawless second round at Sentosa, had a less straightforward third round, mixing four birdies and three bogeys in the first 11 holes.

But she bounced back with consecutive birdies in the next two holes, before sinking a birdie putt on the par-five 16th that gave her the sole lead, which she did not relinquish.

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