Does LPGA star Lydia Ko need five different majors to claim career grand slam? It depends

Lydia Ko won the LPGA’s unofficial Asian major over the weekend in Singapore. The HSBC Women’s World Championship marked Ko’s 23rd LPGA title and gives fuel to the notion that she might achieve her next big dream: the career grand slam. But what is the career grand slam on the LPGA, exactly?

Well, that depends on who you ask.
After the LPGA added a fifth major, tour officials deemed that players who have won four different majors available in their careers will have accomplished the career grand slam. Those who have won five different majors will have won the super career grand slam. Ko, the LPGA Hall of Fame’s newest member, has won three different majors: 2015 Evian, 2016 ANA Inspiration (now Chevron) and 2024 AIG Women’s British Open. She’s still chasing the U.S. Women’s Open and KPMG Women’s PGA.

The dictionary definition of a grand slam is a clean sweep, making the LPGA’s notion that only four is required somewhat of a controversial take. What does Ko think she needs to do to achieve her goal? “In my books, it’s five,” she said recently in Singapore. The more the merrier, she added with a laugh. The LPGA website has a page devoted to the subject, and its statement included the following:

“The term grand slam was translated to golf 20 years before the LPGA was founded and the LPGA has not always had four majors. We began our major history with three. In some years we competed for two, in some years three, in some years four and now five. “The LPGA did not add a fifth major championship to change history, alter discussion or make the accomplishment of a ‘grand slam’ more difficult. We added a fifth major to create an incremental opportunity for the women’s game.”

The LPGA recognizes seven players as having won the career grand slam: Louise Suggs (1957), Mickey Wright (1962), Pat Bradley (1986), Juli Inkster (1999), Karrie Webb (2001), Annika Sorenstam (2003) and Inbee Park (2015). Webb is the only player to have won the super career grand slam. That happened in 2002 when she won the Weetabix Women’s British Open. She’d previously won the McDonald’s LPGA Championship, U.S. Women’s Open, Nabisco Championship and du Maurier Classic.

Webb was 26 years old when she completed the career grand slam and 27 when she achieved the super career grand slam. Ko, who turns 28 on April 24, won’t break Webb’s records as the youngest to accomplish both feats, though the former prodigy already has plenty of those kind of accolades to her credit. It was after Ko won the Women’s British Open over the Old Course at St. Andrews that she set the goal of completing the career grand slam. She hadn’t had many previous good results on links courses and thought, well, why not?

“Having two miracles happen in the span of three weeks of winning (Olympic) gold and the last major of the year, I thought, if those things that I wasn’t really sure was going to happen, happened, as long as I put a goal and set my mind to it, like who knows what can happen,” she reasoned. “I know last year was an amazing year, and it’s kind of hard to classify, is it just as good as the year I got Player of the Year or better? I think I was a little afraid that I wouldn’t be able to match or have that fluidity after having a year like last year.

“But I’ve come to peace that, you know, I had a great last year last year and who is to say I can’t have an even greater year this year.” Only three months remain until the U.S. Women’s Open at Erin Hills, a championship that’s starred on Ko’s calendar.There’s no question that Ko has already achieved the status of greatness. Getting to five different majors would simply add to her legend.