LYDIA KO may still only be 21-years-old but already, she has achieved almost all there is to achieve in golf.

The New Zealander has won two major championships and occupied the world number one ranking spot but she confesses there remains a hole in her CV that she is desperate to fill: a victory in Scotland.

Ko is one of the star attractions at the Ladies Scottish Open, which begins in Gullane today, but if she is to notch up her first career victory on these shores, she will have her work cut out. Ten of the world’s top fifteen players are in East Lothian this week, as well as all five holders of the current majors.

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A missed cut at last year’s event gave Ko little to celebrate but a fourth-place finish in 2015 is a result she will be keener to recall. And with the Kiwi an enthusiastic fan of links golf, she is hopeful she can find that form over the next four days and and in turn, tick off a significant element on her career to-do list.

“It would be so cool to win in Scotland because it is really the Home of Golf,” she said.

“To win where it all started, you kind of feel like you’re being part of history.

“I love playing links golf - it’s a bit of a different to what you normally play. I think it brings out the 15th club, where you have to be a bit more creative and you have to hit shots that normally you wouldn’t be doing.

“If it’s sometime within this week, that would be great, but if it’s within sometime in my career, I think that will be a pretty special moment for me.”

From early 2015, Ko spent over two uninterrupted years in the top spot in the world rankings, aided by her two major wins, but the past year has seen a dip in form. She has fallen to number 16 in the world and went almost a year without a tournament victory, with technical changes not helping her recovery.

However, it appears that Ko is back on track, with a victory in the LPGA Mediheal Championship in California in April returning her to winning ways, as well as providing a confidence boost which, she admits, was much-needed.

“Winning in San Francisco gave me the confidence to say, hey, the game is there,” she said.

“I always felt like the puzzle pieces were all laid out but I just couldn’t connect it. Sometimes that is the hardest thing where you feel like those pieces in your game are there, but you just don’t know how to connect it all or to produce a good round or a good tournament.

“It was nice to have that win and so there’s no doubt in my mind or doubt in other people’s minds.”

The signs are good for Ko this week. A practice round earlier in the week saw the slight, 5 foot 5 inch woman hit her longest-ever drive which gave her plenty reason to smile.

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“I hit my career-longest on No. 10 on Monday - t went like 347 which is outrageous for me,” she revealed.

“I’d love a few more of those drives. I probably average like 255 yards off the tee so I was about 95 yards longer than what I normally do. It’s nice when you’ve only got like a 50-yard chip-in and you can almost putt it in from there with how nice the ball is rolling on the fairways.”

Ko’s stiffest competition for the title this week is likely to come from the likes of world top-five players, Hyun Sung Park, Ariya Jutanugarn and So Yeon Ryu as well as Michelle Wie, Cristie Kerr and home favourite, Catriona Matthew.

Worth keeping an eye on though, is defending champion Mi-Hyang Lee, who came from nine shots behind to win at Dundonald Links twelve months ago. The South Korean returns to Scotland a year on but she admits that the contrast in weather this year makes things almost unrecognisable.

“I love being back here and am really look forward to playing this week,” the 25-year-old said.

“But it feels a lot different - the weather is so much different. Last year, it was raining, strong wind and so cold but this week, everything is good.”

Last year, Lee’s clubs were lost by the airline on her way to Scotland and by sheer coincidence, the exact same fate befell her this year, However, now reunited with her equipment, the world number 54 hopes this is a good omen for this year’s event.

“The players told me, yeah, you can win again. So hopefully I have luck with that,” she said.

“It was a different airline this year but still the same.

“And this year, I even took business class, but it was still the same.”