The Astounding Rise of Korean Female Golfers

LeBron James has taken his talents to southern California, Bryce Harper just signed a $330 million contract with the Philadelphia Phillies, the New England Patriots won yet another Super Bowl, and preparations for the Tokyo Summer Olympics (2020) and Qatar World Cup (2022) are well under way. All of these sports stories are interesting in their own right, but I believe they take a back seat to another one—the dominance of Koreans in women’s professional golf. Look at the leader board at virtually any tournament on the Ladies Pro Golf Association circuit, and you will find taegukki after taegukki.

Queens of their realm

Of the 500 or so fascinating facts in the Koreans’ drive to become the best in pro golf, here are a few. Since 1998, there have been only five seasons in which no Korean was named player of the year, rookie of the year or winner of the Vare Trophy (given for the lowest average score); the country had no winners until 1998, but nine Korean women won 64 events over the next decade; 15 of the LPGA’s 33 tournaments in 2017 were won by Koreans, including three of the five majors; Korean golf fans who expected to see a sweep at the Rio Summer Olympics had to settle for gold (Inbee Park) and silver (Lydia Ko, Korea-born but now a citizen of New Zealand); between 2008 and 2017, Koreans or women of Korean descent won the U.S. Open eight times; through the end of 2018, Korean women had won a total of 29 major tournaments; six of the top 10 money winners so far in 2019 are Korean; and one recent ranking of female pro golfers showed 44 out of 100 being either from Korea or of Korean descent.

The Korean golfing boom, among women at least, is usually traced to 1998 when Se-ri Pak won the U.S. Open, another major and two more tourneys. Although there is no doubt that Pak changed the sports dynamic here in Korea, what she did was not completely out of the blue. The LPGA of Korea began in 1978, following the lead of the LPGA of Japan (1968). We should remember that Ok Hee-ku won an LPGA event in Phoenix in 1988; Pak would also win there in 2003.

Se-ri kids

Pak, a native of Daejeon who won 39 tourneys before retiring in 2016, is the key. Other girls and young women—calling themselves “Se-ri kids”—were inspired and began working assiduously. With support from their parents, state-sponsored golf academies and corporate sponsors, they rose up and conquered the sport. One reason their achievement is so stunning is that Korea had no golf culture or history half a century ago. The Americans and Europeans were assumed to have a permanent lock on golfing success. Furthermore, where was there to play? Korea had few golf courses (there are now about 450, roughly the number you will find in the state of Indiana alone), and playing a round was quite costly. They found alternative ways of mastering the game with indoor and outdoor driving ranges, high-tech screen golf and putting greens.

The evolution of a three-tiered golfing circuit has made an appreciable difference. The Jump Tour, for girls between 10 and 16, currently has 16 events. Make the grade, and you move to the Dream Tour which has 22 events. Big time in this country is the KLPGA Tour, consisting of 32 events and more than $22 million in prize money. These tournaments, which get widespread media attention in Korea, are cut-throat competitive. By the time a young woman has survived the Jump Tour, the Dream Tour and the KLPGA Tour, she is a seasoned veteran with excellent golfing ability and nerves of steel. She is ready to try her luck in the USA, and luck seldom has anything to do with it.

Success has bred success, leading to a deep talent pool. One observer claims there are between 3,000 and 4,000 “high-performance” female golfers in Korea. Their ascension to the top of the field is now an accomplished fact, and one is no longer surprised to see a Korean golfer hoisting the trophy after the final round of a big event in America, Europe or Japan. Few doubt that Korean women will continue to rip up the links.

(I will stop here and address an unpleasant issue. There is some degree of resentment on the part of American and European players about how Asians—especially Koreans—have taken over women’s golf. Jessica Korda and the now-retired Jan Stephenson have bemoaned it. Stephenson, an Australian who lives in Florida, said, “The Asians are killing our tour” and even suggested that their numbers be limited by means of a quota. She knew she would get whipsawed for saying that, and she was. An apology followed quickly.)

Mad for golf

One may fairly ask why the Korean men do not replicate the staggering success of the women. Only three Koreans are currently in the top 100 PGA rankings. If I may generalize, it has to do with physical power. The women play shorter courses, and so driving distance is less important. Indeed, if you check the top ten drivers in women’s pro golf, none are Korean. So the showing by male golfers like K.J. Choi, Kim Si-woo and Yang Yong-eun is all the more impressive.

Korea is today a golf-mad country. Some highly focused kids get up at 5 a.m. so they can spend an hour hitting balls before going to school. The final round of the KEB Hana Bank tourney in 2018 (won by Chun In-gee) drew 38,000 boisterous spectators to the Sky 72 Golf Club in Incheon; the Americans, Brits, Canadians, Swedes, Aussies, et al. could hardly believe it. There are 3 million regular players in Korea, male and female, and 9,000 accredited coaches. The driving ranges, screen-golf establishments and putting greens I referred to earlier are packed, TV ratings are high, pro players have enthusiastic fan clubs, and the number of courses continues to grow.