Ko then won the New Zealand Stroke Play Championship, beating Cho by 9 shots. This event set up the draw for the New Zealand Match Play Championship, which once again ended up being a final matchup between Cho and Ko. And once again, Ko triumphed, beating her friend 4 and 3 in the final despite the fact Cho had won the event the two previous years. This allowed Ko to rise to #1 in the amateur rankings, knocking Cho down to #2. Ko became the first woman to ever hold both the Australian and New Zealand Stroke Play titles in the same year.

In May, Ko also won the Muriwai Ladies Open, beating a field of pros and amateurs. She then launched her first effort to play in the big European and American amateur events. She lost early in the British Women's Amateur, but claimed the co-medalist honors at the US Women's Amateur before falling in the second round of match play.

Ko then had an operation to fix an ailing wrist, and missed six weeks of action while she recovered. But in early 2012, it did not take her long to get back to her winning ways. In January, she won the Australian Women's (Match Play) Amateur. She is believed to be the first woman to EVER hold the Australian Women's Match Play + Stroke Play titles and the New Zealand Amateur Stroke play and Match Play titles all at the same time. That's an extraordinary accomplishment for anyone, let alone a 14 year old.

And yet, Ko was just getting warmed up. The next week, she attended the NSW Open on the ALPG. The previous year she had come within one stroke of rewriting the record books when she finished second here. This time, she left nothing to chance. In the second round, she shot a blistering 64 to take a four shot lead. In the final round, despite strenuous pressure from professional Lindsey Wright, Ko never wavered, and won the tournament easily by four. She thus became the youngest person to ever win a professional golf event, anywhere in the world, breaking the record held by Ryo Ishikawa of Japan, who was 15 when he won his first pro title. She also crushed the women's record held by Amy Yang, who had won the ANZ Ladies Masters as a 16 year old in 2006.

There had been only a couple of press people covering the win, but as news of her achievement got out, Ko was swamped with media attention. As it turned out, she was playing the very next week at the RACV Australian Ladies Masters, as was another teen superstar in the making, Alexis Thompson. Ko had never met Thompson before, and the promoters wasted no time in pairing the two for the first two rounds of the Masters. Ko's goal was to simply make the cut, but she wound up in the top 20 most of the week before fading a bit on Sunday to finish tied for 32nd.