Monday, Oct. 04, 2004

Song Aree

By Donald Macintyre

When South Korea's Song Aree first picked up a golf club at the age of seven, she was so klutzy her brother refused to play with her. The clumsiness didn't last long. In 1999, when she was only 13, Song became the youngest player to win the U.S. Girls' Junior Championship. In March this year, just weeks into her rookie season on the U.S. Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) tour, Song sank a jaw-dropping 10-meter putt on the 18th hole of the last round of the Kraft Nabisco Championship to come within a stroke of becoming the youngest woman to win one of the LPGA's four majors. This precocious talent—and her triumphant Tiger Woods-style fist pump after sinking that shot—has won her legions of ecstatic fans back home. "I've been getting up early to watch every LPGA game ever since," gushed an admirer on one of many Song websites. Cheered another: "Go! Go! Aree!"

If you're a South Korean fan of women's professional golf, you have plenty of stars to root for. Song, 18, just lost a long-running battle for the LPGA's Rookie of the Year award to another South Korean, 20-year-old Ahn Shi Hyun. There's lanky Grace Park, 25, whose skill at blasting the ball down the fairway has helped her win five tournaments in five years (it was Park who snatched that Kraft Nabisco trophy from Song with a 1.8-meter putt). Kim Mi Hyun, 27, dubbed "super peanut" for her size—just 1.57 m. tall—and toughness, has racked up five wins and a second-place finish in the British Open, thanks to an excellent short game. In fact, nine of the top 30 money earners on the U.S. circuit are South Korean, far and away the most successful contingent of foreign players. Pak Se Ri, 27, the youngest woman ever to win four majors, qualified for the LPGA Hall of Fame in May and is one of the world's best female players today.

The phenomenal international success of South Korea's female golfers is a source of pride for a country that always stands taller when its citizens are beating foreigners, especially Americans. Pak Se Ri's first major victory in 1998 helped pull South Korea out of a national funk during the Asian financial crisis. Millions of South Koreans are glued to their sets in the early-morning hours when LPGA games are broadcast live. (South Korea pays more for LPGA overseas broadcast rights than any other country, including golf-mad Japan.) "There is tremendous interest," says golf columnist Kim Maeng Nyung.

Grace Park jokes that it's something in kimchi, the fiery pickled cabbage dish, that makes South Koreans golf's superwomen. But the real secret is that they are focused and motivated. Pak Se Ri's father-coach made her sleep overnight in a cemetery to strengthen her mentally. Kim Mi Hyun once played with appendicitis, thinking it was just a bad stomach ache, and collapsed after the match. The South Koreans also come from a crowded, ultracompetitive nation that places a high premium on achievement. Says Song, the youngest woman on the LPGA tour this year: "The harder you work, the more you gain—that's what we live by." That determination is evident on U.S. golf courses as darkness settles after an LPGA tournament round. Says avid U.S. fan Eric Fleming, who was so impressed with South Korea's female golfers that he now runs a website devoted to them: "Everyone goes to dinner, but the Koreans are still working on their game, trying to figure out what went wrong."

Women's golf's South Korean idols have inspired local girls to line up to learn the game, sparking a boom in new driving ranges and sales of golf equipment and accessories. Says Song: "Little kids come up to me and say, 'I really like your outfit' or 'I really like your shoes' and then turn around to their parents and say 'I want the exact same outfit and shoes.'" So the LPGA better watch out: the next generation of South Koreans could turn out to possess even meaner swings.

With reporting by Noel Yang/Seoul