Se Ri Pak's Tour Diary

As originally written by Se Ri Pak for Joong Ang Ilbo. Translation by LoveGiants

Diary Entry #11: Shot-put Strengthened My Lower Back

I feel like I'm dreaming. After winning the Open, I had a chance to board a personal plane, and I heard that the president of the U.S wanted to play a round of golf with me. Many fans recognized me, and my manager became busy scheduling interviews. Sometimes he turns off his cell phone because he is tired of refusing so many interviews.

I sometimes imagine myself to be a shot-putter. Frankly speaking, I was close to becoming one. I did shot-put and track from my 5th school year in elementary school till my 2nd in middle school. When I was in my 6th year in elementary school, I won the 400m hurdle race in the Daejeon citizens' athletic meet. The physical education teacher praised me for my power and flexibility. He asserted that I could definitely be a gold medalist in the Olympic Games. The things I learned from shot-put helped me in playing golf later.

Shot-put and golf share many similarities. They both require power and flexibility. They both need power from the strongly twisted lower back. People say that I began golf late and made rapid progress. Maybe shot-put played an important role in my life. Ok Hee Ku and Ae Sook Kim, veteran Korean players of the JLPGA, were also once shot-putters.

When I began golf, there were few in Korea who could play golf from an early age. Only the rich could. When people saw me swing my clubs, they would make sarcastic remarks behind my back. "Cut your coat according to your cloth", they would say (meaning that you should know your place).

At that time, there was one person who encouraged me, Sang Gi Seo, one of my father's friends (he has two sons and both are professional golfers.) Father often bet on golf. When father would lose money, I would propose to him to play golf in his place, and I would win back the money my father had lost. Seo was the one who suggested that I should be a golfer as a career. He saw the desire for victory in me. My nature never to lose anything and father's ambition to make me a world class player finally met.

There was one problem. In school, the physical education teacher insisted that I should be a shot-putter. The teacher and my father got into a tug of war. So I had to be a shot-putter in school and a golfer at home for a while. Finally father compromised with the teacher. If I could not win a tournament within a year, I would be a shot-putter. I started to devote myself to golf after that.

Diary Entry #12: My Shabby Debut in Golf

Father has enjoyed his fame since the Open. When he is with me, many recognize him and sometimes people even plague him for his autograph. He looks a little shy but also seems to enjoy it. I can also see the hard days of the past in him.

After the first round of the Jamie Farr, I burst into tears in the car when I was coming back to the hotel after dinner at a Korean resident's house. He soothed me, patting me on the shoulder. He said, "Se Ri, we still have a long way to go...", and I nodded.

My face still flushes when I look back upon myself in those days. How shabby! Except for me, all the other participants were equipped with the latest golf clubs. And their personal coaches and their parents' enthusiastic cheer also depressed me. I didn't have any acquaintance there. What I had were only the old golf clubs. I tried to take pride.

My score was 89 strokes for the 1st round and 83 for the 2nd round. I finished third among the middle school girls, and the result was satisfying considering that it was my debut event. But father sighed, "You could have won the event, if you had had better clubs..." Father suffered from a feeling of helplessness.

In those days, father was spoken of badly by others because he was poor but still tried to make me a golfer. They laughed at him, saying that he didn't know his place. He heard even worse insults. "You abuse your daughter only for money." Whenever I heard those kinds of insults, I was chagrined. How could they know my father's self-sacrificing love for me? Father's efforts to make me a golfer cannot be explained except by love.

Father often says, "Se Ri, is there any university to confer on me a doctor's degree of golf? I think I have the qualification." So he has. He tried to learn golf through videotapes, books, and hearsay... and taught me whatever he thought was good. If someone talked about a better way to swing, he checked it out in person, and after changing it to fit me, he made me practice. He wrestled with books about golf skills as if he intended to write a doctoral thesis on golf.

"If I had studied like this in my younger days, I could have become a lawyer or a judge" (the typical jobs for the chosen elites). Often when father said this, he looked so regretful. If he said that again today, I would answer like this. "Now, you're in a much better position than a lawyer or a judge. All the people recognize you, because you are Se Ri's father."