What makes teenage golf phenom Lydia Ko tick?

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Lydia Ko was only 15 when she first stood on the tee at the Vancouver Golf Club three years ago. Days earlier, she had won the prestigious U.S. Women's Amateur, and she arrived here early to get in some extra practice ahead of the 2012 Canadian Pacific Women's Open, a professional event on the LPGA Tour.

The first practice round began badly. Her initial tee shot flared way right. She hacked her second shot back across and over the fairway into more rough. Ko's caddy, club member Brian Alexander, figured the teenager wouldn't last long in the tournament.

Those initial miscues, however, were among the only botched shots Ko made that week – during the tournament, Alexander never once had to rake a sand trap. Ko casually cracked drives straight and long, and hit 62 of 72 greens in regulation.

She snacked on cherry tomatoes, grapes and kimbap, a Korean dish similar to sushi rolls, as she strolled the fairways. She'd joke with and tease the then-63-year-old Alexander. It might have been a national championship, but it also was a walk in the park for the insouciant youth.

Ko was tied for second after the first round, tied for first after the second, led by one shot after the third and pulled away on the Sunday to become the youngest woman to ever win an LPGA Tour event.

"She never, other than once or twice, showed any nerves at all," Alexander remembers. "It was remarkable."

"He kept me calm," Ko recalls of her caddy. "I had so much fun with him. I didn't know that I was making history. I was out there trying to have fun."

Ko, now a second-year pro, is in Vancouver this week at the Open, arriving as the No. 2– ranked player in women's golf. There has been a series of teenage golf phenoms in the past decade – Canada's 17-year-old Brooke Henderson, last weekend, became the latest prodigy to emerge as an LPGA winner. But Ko's young career is among the most incredible: Last year, Time magazine put her on its annual list of the world's 100 most influential people.

The past three years for Ko have largely mirrored the way she plays – steady and certain. A year after that first pro victory, she won another Canadian Open, in Edmonton in 2013, and turned pro later that year after 21/2 years as the world's No. 1 amateur. She won three times in her rookie pro year, 2014, and has two victories so far in 2015. She did not miss a single cut in her first 53 LPGA tournaments. In one stretch that ended last March, she played 29 straight LPGA tournament rounds under par, tying a record held by all-time great Annika Sorenstam. And she held the world's No. 1 ranking for more than three months until she was overtaken in mid-June by South Korean star Inbee Park.

What Ko's résumé is missing is a major championship. She has come close several times, but she has also struggled at majors, relatively speaking. She has yet to crack the top 10 at the U.S. Women's Open, she tied for 51st at the ANA Inspiration in April and missed the cut at the KPMG Women's PGA Championship in June.

Ko, 5 foot 5, is an exceptional talent who was put through the rigours of elite pro-level training from an early age. Born in South Korea, she moved with her family to Auckland, New Zealand, when she was 6, settling near the Pupuke Golf Club.

Famously, she and mother, Tina, walked into the club pro shop one day and Tina asked a 22-year-old aspiring coach, Guy Wilson, if he could tutor Lydia four days a week. Wilson at first didn't understand who Tina meant, unable to see Lydia, who was shorter than the countertop.

By the age of 12, backed by an operation called the Institute of Golf, Ko's game was complemented by an array of experts and technology providing advice on things such as psychology, podiatry and nutrition. She used a Danish-made device with military-inspired radar technology to do microassessments of every nuance of her swing.

Underpinning everything, however, were thousands of repetitions on the range. "Lydia hits more balls than anyone," Wilson said.

She has long professed a love for golf, and she didn't seem to mind when, playing as an amateur, she had to forgo nearly $1-million in prize money, the majority of it from her two Canadian Open wins. "She is too young to make money," Tina Ko told The Globe and Mail in 2012 after her daughter won in Vancouver and didn't claim the $300,000 that normally goes to the champion. She has made up for that as a pro, earning $3.5-million so far.

Ko may have been rushed into her career. There is a monastic nature to such a life in elite sport, and earlier this year, as she struggled somewhat with her game, Ko spoke about missing home in New Zealand (she has relocated to Florida), missing her friends, feeling the grind of a life almost entirely on the road.

Her coach, David Leadbetter, raised the risk of burnout, citing fatigue as the reason for some poor results: Ko needed to ease up on practice and actually rest during time off.

"Having fun," Ko said in July, "is the most important thing."

So she's connected with friends more by phone lately. "I love talking to my friends," she says. "They get my mind off golf. I can just be a normal 18-year-old."

When Ko first came to Vancouver, her mother, who caddied for her daughter at the U.S. Amateur, asked the club about an available local with course expertise. Alexander knew the course intimately, but was a first-time caddy. He chuckles at the memory of Tina's skepticism of an older caddy making it through the tournament. "There were some doubts," Alexander says.

About Ko, he has no doubts.

"She's on her way," Alexander predicts, "to the Hall of Fame."