The South Korean player won the season-opening event in the Bahamas for her third career title. She was encouraged to be so close to the lead, even though she said she didn’t have her best game.
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Kelly Shon putted on the ninth hole during the first round of the Marathon Classic.
The top-ranked Ko made a 10-foot birdie putt on the fourth extra hole after Jutanugarn and Lee ran into trouble on the par-5 18th.
Ko won in consecutive weeks in Southern California this year, the second the major ANA Inspiration. She’s 4-1 in playoffs.
“Just target the middle of the green”, she said.
“It was a good extra four holes”. In my yardage book I kept writing four, five, six seven… “In my yardage book, I almost ran out of pages”.
“It’s been a great week”. “I didn’t feel that down or disappointed”. “I’m not really a huge fist-pump kind of person, but I think it’s probably the biggest fist-pump I’ve ever done”.
Victory came on a day when she was confirmed to lead New Zealand’s golf team at the Rio Olympics.
Stacy Lewis and Ariya Jutanugarn are four shots back in a tie for fourth at 11-under.
Ko opened with rounds of 68, 66 and 67 to enter the day three strokes behind Hyo Joo Kim.
Lee shot a 65, bogeying the 18th lose the outright lead after making birdies on 13, 15, 16 and 17.
The trio all recorded pars on three straight occasions as the playoff kept taking place down the 18th hole before Ko finally secured victory with a birdie on the fourth attempt.
“Last night, it was raining, so it’s little bit more softer green”, Kim said through a translator. “I haven’t had a good round like this in a while. I’ve been just kind of grinding away and, hopefully, I’ll be able to keep at it the next few days”.
“Hyo-Joo played great today, holed a lot of putts, put herself in really good positions, so yeah, obviously I’ll be trying to track her down tomorrow, but there’s still a lot of golf to be played”.
Some past winners of this event struggled in the first round.
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She also heads the Race to the CME Globe and the key statistic areas of putts per GIR, putting average, scoring average, rounds under par, and rounds in the 60s.
