As a well-known Spanish song from the 80’s says, girls are warriors, especially if they are dedicated to golf and they were born in Korea… South Korea, of course. The phenomenon of Asian women’s professional golf, with an overwhelming South Korean preponderance, exploded almost twenty years ago with the emergence on the international scene of Se Ri Pak. Since 1998, Korean women have won 19 majors, of which Se Ri Pak and Inbee Park have each scored five.
In the world rankings, golfers born in that Far Eastern country occupied three of the top four places at the end of April. The number one is Lydia Ko, who, although a New Zealander, was born in Korea. The second is Inbee and the fourth, Hyo-Joo Kim. The seventh is also Korean and there are eight others in the top 25, meaning that more than half of the top 25 were born in Korea.
In this season’s earnings list on the LPGA Tour, the American Women’s Tour, South Korean-born players occupy seven of the top 10 positions, with Si Young Kim leading the way. The remaining three in the top 10 are North Americans. The first European is Sweden’s Anna Nordqvist, in twelfth position, and the second, Spain’s Carlota Ciganda, in nineteenth.
If the country’s professional women golfers are causing a furor in world golf, their male compatriots are far from doing the same. While the Korean women have won 19 majors, including two of the five last season, the Koreans can only boast of one, the one won by Y.E. Yang, against Tiger Woods, at the 2009 US PGA Championship. After that feat, Yang, whose first American victory came that same season a few months earlier (The Honda Classic) has never again tasted victory on the PGA Tour, although he did have a couple of victories in 2010 on the OneAsia Tour. And that shows in his position in the rankings: he is above 200 in the American Tour and close to 500 in the world rankings.
If Se Ri Pak was the Korean pioneer to succeed in America, K.J. Choi (Choi Kyung-Ju is his real name) was the first Korean to obtain the card to play the PGA Tour (in 2000), a circuit in which he has won a total of eight tournaments, the first in 2002 (Compaq Classic of New Orleans) and the last in 2011 (The Players Championship).
Aged 45 and a professional since 1994, he has earned 30 million dollars on the PGA Tour.
The truth is that the South Korean men’s scene is not very bright at present. In the world ranking, in April the first player of that nationality, Sangmoon Bae, was ranked 79th, the second, Seungyul Noh, 108th, and the third, K.J. Choi, 131st. However, on the current season’s PGA Tour earnings list, things look better, as Bae, 28, a professional since 2004, was 12th.
Bae, however, despite starting with a victory (Frys.com Open), is having an irregular season on the PGA Tour, since in the fifteen tournaments played until the end of April he had registered four top 10s and missed four cuts, apart from withdrawing in another tournament.
Curiously, the best South Korean in the rankings is an American! Kevin Na is Korean by birth but has American nationality, as his parents moved to Uncle Sam’s country when he was eight years old. He is twelfth on the PGA Tour, where his only victory came in 2011 (Justin Timberlake Shriners Hospitals for Children Open), and twenty-first in the world ranking. In 2010 he took his first steps as an actor when he appeared in an episode of the series CSI Las Vegas. He is 31 years old.
The perfectionist spirit of the young golfers, their abnegation in training, the facilities provided to them to be able to combine their studies without problems with their golf preparation, scholarships to study in the United States and a strong support from the family (many parents follow their daughters in their American journey) are some of the keys why South Korean women’s golf has reached its current international level.
The Korean miracle is already a reality as far as female golfers are concerned. Will their male compatriots be able to stage a similar revolution?
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