In 1998, Se Ri Pak, a 20-year-old rookie on the LPGA Tour, won four tournaments, including two majors. More than a decade later, now hailed as an icon who has changed the face of golf even more than Tiger Woods, the South Korean Hall of Famer seals her 25th career win at the Bell Micro LPGA Classic, ending the longest winless stretch of her resplendent career.
By Timothy Yoo
On May 16, Se Ri Pak outdueled American Brittany Lincicome and Norwegian Suzann Pettersen in a sudden-death playoff to capture the 2010 LPGA Bell Micro Classic in Mobile, Alabama. The win, Pak’s 25th on the LPGA Tour, also ended a three-year victory drought—the longest in her career.
But don’t call it a comeback.
A comeback follows a career dénouement, and in Se Ri’s mind, she never went anywhere in the first place. Even if the South Korean five-time major champion were to never strike another ball, she has already enjoyed, at the age of 32, one of the all-time great LPGA careers; that much was affirmed when she was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2007 (she actually qualified for the honor in 2004—after just seven years on Tour—but had to wait until completing the minimum 10 seasons). And while others in and around the game might have written her off as past-her-prime, her own self-belief never wavered. To be sure, it had been almost three years—1,036 days to be exact—since Pak last won, at the 2007 Jamie Farr Owens Corning Classic. During that same span, her fellow Koreans had amassed 21 tournament wins on Tour—including a first LPGA title by Korean American wunderkind Michelle Wie. In early May, countrywoman Jiyai Shin, the 2009 LPGA Rookie of the Year, became the first Korean golfer—male or female—to reach Number 1 in the world rankings.
Meanwhile, Pak, who has been hampered by pesky wrist and back injuries in recent seasons, finished outside the Top 25 on the LPGA Money List in back-to-back seasons (52nd in 2008 and 30th in 2009) for the first time. But a now healthy Pak enters the 2010 season eager to prove that she has plenty left in the tank.
“Physically, I feel great—I’ve actually felt very good since the middle of last year,” said Pak (in Korean), during the 2010 KoreAm Pro-Am, an April 5 tournament at the Industry Hills Golf Club, near Los Angeles. “I struggled with injuries a few years ago, but I feel fine now. I’m ready to vindicate my [fans’] loyal support with some very positive results this year.”
The early returns are encouraging: a day earlier, Pak notched a Top-15 finish at the season’s first major, the Kraft Nabisco Championship—her best result at a major in two years. Dressed in a sleek red polo and black warmups while waiting in the players’ lounge at the Pacific Palms Resort before the Pro-Am, Pak spoke with a palpable sense of determination. Her voice, softer-sounding than you might expect, carries a quiet confidence. But the resolute look and steely resolve in her eyes are unmistakable. It turns out those eyes—and not her famously muscular legs—are actually Pak’s most salient physical attribute. Set against her angular face and radiating with intensity, they almost pierce right through you. Indeed, you feel as if she can freeze you with one look—a champion’s gaze.
Last month, that gaze came in handy at Magnolia Grove, during the final round of the Bell Micro Classic. Pak entered the Sunday round in a three-way tie with Pettersen and Lincicome at 13-under 203 through three rounds. After heavy rain suspended play, tournament officials decided to reduce the event to 54 holes, meaning the three co-leaders had to compete in a pressure-filled sudden-death playoff for the title. No problem for Pak. Like other great athletes, such as Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan, she is at her very best during the biggest moments. In fact, Pak has never lost in a do-or-die situation (6-0 career record in sudden-death playoffs). A cagey Pak immediately applied pressure on her younger opponents with accurate tee shots, crisp approaches and, yes, her intimidating stare. And when her foes both faltered on the third playoff hole, Pak capitalized by calmly draining a 10-foot birdie putt to win the tournament and end her victory drought.
Besides a clean bill of health, Pak’s return to form can also be attributed to some minor tweaks in her game. For instance, she is working with a different swing coach this season. Pak’s new and improved golf swing, like her overall game (and to an extent, her personality), is mechanically efficient and disciplined; not as visually spectacular as, say, Michelle Wie’s, but no less breathtaking when seen up close. Its simplistic beauty is difficult to appreciate unless you’ve actually swung a golf club, as many of us no doubt have (albeit woefully) at the local range or public course. But to compare the typical amateur’s swing to Pak’s is to liken your four-year-old’s finger paintings to Van Gogh’s Starry Night.
***
Out on the first tee box at the KoreAm Pro-Am, Pak prepares methodically. Her body is an instrument—and like any instrument, it must be tuned carefully before use. She limbers up by slowly rotating her waist and torso back and forth like a precisely calibrated metronome, while holding out her driver with both arms. She then takes a few light practice cuts through the air, not unlike a prizefighter shadowboxing in a corner before a big bout. Her movements are fluid yet economic—there’s no wasted motion, no unnecessary exertion.
As she settles in for her tee shot, Pak’s knees are slightly bent with her weight optimally distributed between her front and back legs. She bends forward at the waist, back straight, and leans over the ball while steadying her club face. Head down, she turns her shoulders and left hip and draws the club back to begin the kinetic chain, the bulk of her weight now firmly on her back foot. At the top of her swing, her body is fully coiled, ready to unfurl all of its stored potential energy. Within nanoseconds, Pak accelerates her driver downward, like a whip, and begins transferring her momentum forward, while simultaneously keeping her head down through contact. The ball explodes off the club face as Pak completes her follow-through, posting up on her left leg and right toe as her body springs up like a mouse trap. The result: a 220-yard laser beam straight down the middle of the fairway. It’s simple physics, really—force, mass, acceleration, all Isaac Newton-type stuff. But to witness it in person is to see physical poetry, an almost ethereal expression of Pak’s inner self.
The technical intricacies of her golf swing, and the ingrained muscle memory required to execute it, were no doubt keenly honed by the thousands, if not millions, of golf balls that Pak struck as a young teen in Daejeon, Korea. The stories are familiar and nearly folktale-like. Pak routinely woke up at 5:30 a.m. to train—toiling through bucket after bucket of practice balls (sometimes in the dark, with icicles in her hair) each day. (And, if you are to believe some of the taller tales, she walked six miles uphill, in the snow, just to get to the range). Junior golfer development was a foreign concept in Korea at that time; Pak’s success was largely borne upon her own iron will and work ethic.
Still, Pak, who hangs her hat in Orlando, Florida, finds a way to enjoy a world outside of golf. A source of recreation? Watching sports, of course. “I’m not partial to any one team,” says the recent football enthusiast, “but since I live in Florida, I’ve been to a few Miami Dolphins games. I also enjoy watching basketball,” adding that she’s a fan of both the Orlando Magic and the Los Angeles Lakers.
She also reveals that she’s had a steady boyfriend—a Los Angeles-based businessman who is the cousin of one of Pak’s very close friends—for the last four years. “He’s very supportive,” she said. “He comes to my tournaments to cheer me on, and he consoles me when I don’t play particularly well.” And while Pak contemplates marriage in the near future, she doesn’t yet have specific plans. “My future husband—and again, I have no plans at the moment—would have to be very understanding of my lifestyle, my career and my future business plans. It would be difficult for me to stay in one place for long periods. It’ll be very difficult for me to be a stay-at-home mom, so my future husband would have to be very understanding of that.”
If all goes according to plan, Pak will indeed be bouncing between cities—one in Korea and one in the United States, the two countries where she will most likely open chapters of the Se Ri Pak Golf Academy within the next few years. The purpose: to establish a greater institutional infrastructure and support system for the next generation of Korean golfers.
“I’m not yet sure about the precise locations,” said Pak. “It’s often very difficult to find good facilities at which to practice in Korea, despite golf’s popularity. Hopefully, my academy can be an ideal place where junior players can train and practice properly. Obviously, Korean golfers are really coming into their own on the international scene. It’s crucial that Korean juniors have a place to train so they can develop and sharpen their skills.”
So the player who blazed a trail for the current wave of Korean players on the LPGA Tour is already laying the groundwork to build a bridge for the next generation. That, perhaps even more than her astounding success on the golf course itself, will likely be her lasting legacy in the game. In 2008, Golf World lauded Pak as a “pioneer” who had “changed the face of golf” even more than Tiger Woods. To wit, in 1998, Pak was the only Korean on the main LPGA Tour. By 2005, there were 25; by 2009, that number had increased to 47 (which doesn’t include Angela Park of Brazil and American Michelle Wie). On the other hand, there has not been a similar influx of African American players—on either the PGA Tour or the LPGA Tour—since Woods debuted in 1996.
Moreover, at present, the LPGA’s single biggest source of revenue is money from television contracts with South Korean networks for the right to broadcast LPGA tournaments in Korea.
It all started with Se Ri.
But Pak admits that it’s not a legacy she always embraced, at least not initially. “At first, I felt some budam (pressure), because I felt I had to carry a weight and lead the way for the younger players as a role model. But now, my hubaes (the younger players) have become a tremendous source of strength and inspiration.” Those feelings are mutual. Veteran Tour player Christina Kim, who recently penned a refreshingly candid autobiography about her own life on the LPGA, says of Pak: “She’s been influential to so many people and is an icon to the sport.” Kim wrote in Swinging From My Heels, her tell-all tome published in April, that “pretty much all thing concerning Korean golf” could be “traced to Se Ri Pak.”
And while she now relishes her mentoring role, a rejuvenated Pak knows she still has a thing or two to teach the young guns on the golf course. This month, she eyes her fourth title at the season’s second major, the LPGA Championship. It’s an event that she’s won in every World Cup year since 1998 (clinching titles in 1998, 2002 and 2006). With the 2010 Cup set to kick off in South Africa later this month, Se Ri is primed to make more history of her own.
