October 29, 2024 • by Dan Davies / Photography: East Lake Cup
University of Southern California’s Jasmine Koo continued her brilliant fall season with a seven-under-par 65 to claim medalist honors at the 10th annual East Lake Cup in Atlanta. It was the freshman’s third collegiate victory in a row.
Koo joins Annie Park in the record books as the only other USC Trojan to win three successive tournaments. Park completed her hat trick in 2013, winning a conference championship, a regional and then the NCAA individual title.
At East Lake, which hosts the PGA Tour Championship each season, the 18-year-old from Cerritos, California made nine birdies and two bogeys to finish three shots better than her closest competitor, teammate Catherine Park (68). It was the second straight week that USC has provided the same one-two in the individual standings.
It has been some year for Koo, who finished top of the AJGA’s 2024 rankings and was at #4 in the most recent National Collegiate Golf Rankings.
After a 4th place at the Augusta National Women’s Amateur in March, she finished low amateur at the Chevron Championship and then battled through to the semi-finals of the US Girls Junior Championship before representing the USA at the Curtis Cup in England.
Koo gave credit to USC’s sports psychologist for giving her the correct game plan. ‘He said small targets and small misses. He was like that’s a good mentality to come into this course. I was like yeah, I like that.
‘We did a lot of preparation for this tournament, kind of just like the strategy coming into this week,’ added Koo after signing for her 65.
‘I think my shots on the front nine were really good, that I was almost just pin hunting, you know. It was really fun. The back nine, my putts, I was reading them really well, so a lot of putts went in. Just thankful for every shot.’
Asked how he will keep her momentum going, Head Coach Justin Silverstein replied: ‘We just try to keep her focused on the process and what she’s doing day to day… We’ll go back and kind of analyze some of the decisions she made on the golf course.
‘I think there's a lot of stuff she can clean up, believe it or not. She played and scored really well, but I think there’s some strategic things we’ll change going into tomorrow that will help her keep going in the right direction.’
In the match play semi-final, USC, ranked #5, will face UCLA, ranked #29. Koo will play Caroline Canales, who was one of five amateurs to recently make it through to the final stage of LPGA Q-Series. Canales’ teammate Zoe Campos was one of the five and has already announced that this will be her last event as an amateur.
USC finished the 18-hole stroke play event at six under par, six strokes ahead of LSU, who will play fourth ranked Oregon in the other semi-final.
Asked if anything changes going into match play, Koo said she wanted to try to stay in position a little better. ‘I think some of the lines I took today were a little aggressive and I think that tomorrow, it really just depends on what my opponent does, too. There’s strategy involved with that.’
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