Are they barking mad, or did they pour one martini too many at Time magazine?
All po-faced sincerity, Time last week placed Lydia Ko on its annual list of the world's 100 most influential people.
This is a kid only a week past her 17th birthday, who's just won her first title as a member of the LPGA golf tour.
Who, when recently asked what she'd do with her first professional prize money, gazed dreamily through her schoolgirl specs and announced she'd like to buy a puppy.
Most influential? So did Time chuck her in as a wild card for the fun of it? Well actually, I doubt it.
While their selection process may be ropey, it's probably better than most so-called Top Lists. Time polled its staff, and its previous Top 100 alumni. (Vladimir Putin licks his pen and squints at the blank questionnaire. ''I'll go with the Pope, Mick Jagger, and, um, yes of course, Lydia Ko.'')
Whatever the ''science'' of it, the magazine also placed Ko among the 25 names chosen for its cover. That's alongside Pope Francis, Barack Obama and Edward Snowden.
So what's cooking here? We live in a small country given to over-stating our international achievements. If a chap from Tuapeka wins the Winnipeg Egg and Spoon, he'll likely make the national news and have their football field named after him.
So we should be careful what we claim for Lydia. The fuss is not just about her astonishing talent - prodigies are hardly new to ladies' golf.
Clearly Lydia Ko owns some other special quality which is recognised in the Time listing, and heard in the adoring comments of the Golf Channel commentary team who, like the American fans, are embracing Lydia.
What seems to be special is this: In Lydia Ko, sport has found one of its rare ''originals''. She is refreshingly different - the teenage prodigy who, in the face of all the cynical hoo-ha that is modern sport, has retained blithe innocence in a way that's very distinctive. I don't recall her like in sport.
We have a jaded view of teenage sports prodigies - we've seen too many very young careers become prolonged car crashes. It may be easier to give a fish a bath than manage a teenage prodigy.
Andre Agassi took 15 years to evolve from certified teen prodigy to certified adult. Jennifer Capriati never quite made it.
And in Ko's own game, the glamorous Michelle Wie picked up $10 million in endorsements when she turned pro at 15, but nearly a decade later, has just begun to match her promise.
Lydia Ko came on to our radar as a cute, girlish, 14-year-old. Astonishingly, three years later she's much the same. There's still the slightly goofy smile, the daydreamer face, the high school speech inflections and, dear God, the continued respect for her parents.
Lydia could be good at nothing in particular, and we'd still be proud to call her a daughter.
What also surprises is how the ''child's'' approach works for her golf game. Kay Cockerill, one of commentary's wise ''old hands'', got to the essence of Lydia when wrapping up the television coverage of her Swinging Skirts victory.
''She has a kind of naive, low-key approach. She just seems a really restful person - there's no high-edge anxiety,'' she reflected.
There was of course a ''big picture'' aspect to Time's Top 100 reasoning, which is illustrated in a research report on golf's future by banking titan HSBC.
This big golf sponsor noted that while there are 80 million golfers worldwide, numbers are in decline. The bank's promotional nabobs concluded golf's remedies lie in expanding three markets - in youth, women and Asia.
Lydia Ko covers that trifecta - and (without referring to the HSBC report) Time stated it was Lydia's Ko's popular influence in those key areas that explained her importance.
She can't be an innocent 17 forever, so her appeal will change. But we can see why right now the world wants a piece of the authentic Lydia.
What comes when the puppy fat goes and the boyfriends arrive?
Who knows, but she's probably only a few months from becoming the most important sportsperson New Zealand has put on to the international stage. Or is she already?
John Lapsley is an Arrowtown writer.
