Hours After Lydia Ko Candidly Reflected on Disheartening Season, 2X Major Winning LPGA Star Comes Clean About Struggles With ‘High Expectations’

Handling a dull phase in one’s career is quite hard, especially if millions are constantly looking up your numbers and talking about it. This is the life for people in the public eye, though. The struggle is especially real for sports stars since there is a lot more access to their performance both visually and statistically. 

Lydia Ko, recently got emotional while discussing her setback in the current season, after having a brilliant year in 2022. She spoke about this in a conference at the ongoing Kroger Queen City Championship. Now, another LPGA Tour Pro has opened up about her struggles with handling expectations from herself and the fans. 

Australian golfer explains the hardships of handling pressure from past performance 

In a post-round conference, after her crowd-pleasing third round at the Queen City tournament, Minjee Lee opened up about her current season’s performance. She received a question about her current season’s setback compared to the spectacular season she had the previous year. “I think it’s always really hard to back up an amazing year with another really amazing year.”

Lee explained how coming into this year, there was a lot of pressure on her, mostly from her own expectations. She described how she wanted to repeat that brilliance consecutively. “Why can’t I do that every week? But obviously you can’t because you’re human.”

She spoke about how resetting her goals has helped her big time. Lee probably is referring to more realistic expectations for herself, focusing on immediate goals rather than long-term ones. She said this was possible for her as she is a one-shot-at-a-time kind of person. 

Earlier, Lydia Ko, who is also playing in the ongoing Kroger Queen City Championship, spoke about how self-pressure affected her game. She lamented how it’s a difficult task to snap out of a bad phase. 

Read more: “My Brain Is Kind of Tired”: The Kroger Queen City Championship Pushed This LPGA Star Over Her Limit as She Strives to Maintain Composure

Coming back to Minjee Lee, has her current season been really that bad? A glimpse into her stats might give us an idea.

Not bad, but not great either — a review of Minjee Lee’s season so far

In May, this year, Minjee Lee finished second in the Cognizant Founders Cup. After that, barring the Greater Toledo LPGA Classic, she has finished no tournament in the top ten positions. Although many times she has finished in the top 15, that’s not really the benchmark Lee has set for herself. 

Especially, her drop to a shared 50th position in the AIG Women’s Open was heartbreaking for her fans to witness. However, Lee has compensated for all the lull in the past few months by finishing the third round of the Kroger Queen City Championship at the top of the leaderboard.

Her third-round performance was too good as she scored a 7-under, which is almost half of her cumulative score for the tournament so far. She stands first with a 15-under, all ready to roar in the final round. 

Do you think Lee would maintain the lead and announce her return in great style? Who else stands a chance of finishing first? Tell us in the comments below!

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