Why ARE Korean Women So Good At Golf?

Look at the results of the recent U.S. Women's Open. There's no denying it: Korean chicks got golf game! Why are they so good at golf? There are many theories. Some are HILARIOUS!

Just as an aside, the Hwang Woo Seok mentioned in the link above was found to have been faking his stem cell research and totally discredited. If you read the article in Time Magazine written about him before he was exposed as the fraud he is, it's really funny how the interviewer sneaks a little hint of his own discreditation into it in the way he describes Hwang explaining how chopstick skills directly translate into scientific skills and how Korean chopsticks are harder to use so they are more skillful. Even in print it was easy to tell the author didn't write that with a straight face. Here in Korea, if you're Korean, you have to at least act like you believe that baloney.

But back on track here: why are Korean ladies so good at golf. The answer is as simple as the people. Using the same phrase as many have used to describe my putting stroke, having been here as long as I have and having no cultural blinders that would lead to silliness like the above link, I feel like I am uniquely qualified to "take a stab at this".

I have met thousands of Korean women. Since my job requires me to meet new women so often I could safely say I've met more Korean women than most Korean people ever will. And since in my classrooms I try to foster a distinctly NON-Korean atmosphere, (that is, informal), people tend to say things in my class they would never say in regular Korean society where they are obliged to constantly act, perform and live by the rules of other people. MANY students and friends have commented on how comfortable they feel when they are talking to me or with other foreigners. Korean men are CONSTANTLY asking why a lot of Korean women seem to go for foreign guys. Well this would definitely be part of it. I won't mention any other parts of foreign guys because they have nothing to do with the subject at hand.

Getting back to the rules mentioned in the last paragraph, I think that this is at the heart of Korean golfing greatness. You see, women the country over are performing every day tasks by rote. Very little if anything they do is done with full consciousness. Walking, operating a shopping cart, a vehicle, talking, studying... if you studied Korean women you would see that they are very well trained to operate in a mental gear I like to call neutral. DATE a Korean woman and you'll find out even more.

I tell a joke in my classes: A Korean man has a really bad car accident. He's bleeding profusely from his head, one arm and one leg are broken but he manages to walk to a hospital on his own. A nurse looks at him and exclaims, "Oh my GOD! How are you?" He replies, "Iamfinethankyouandyou?" It could just as easily have been a Korean woman in the joke although she wouldn't walk to the hospital, she'd take out one of her cellphones and call.

If you hang out with Koreans you will notice that this is the response they've been trained to give to this question. In fact most "schools" I've worked for try their best to encourage teachers to teach the entire English language so that it can be spoken as mindlessly as this. And when you listen to Koreans speaking Korean I'm convinced that it's well on its way to becoming just a list of identical questions and answers used by everyone identically every time.

What a tremendous DRAG! I can't tell you how many times I've asked garden variety ice breakers and received some response like, "I never think of this." So LIVE a little for God's sake! Let language entertain you once in a while.

Speaking of that, language comedy? Doesn't yet exist here. Nothing but slapstick.

Try to be inventive with the Korean language yourself? Good luck. One time instead of saying, "I want dalk kalbi," I said, "I NEED dalk kalbi." (dalk kalbi is a really delicious spicy chicken dish here in Korea). The Koreans I was with not only didn't appreciate my adventurous linguistics, they took a LONG time to understand what I was saying and their final report was, "Nobody says that in Korean."

This is one of the major frustrations about learning Korean that has totally demoralized myself and a lot of other people who have tried to learn it. Say something slightly wrong and even smart people probably won't understand you. They have two sets of numbers in Korea and no discernable pattern as to when to use which. But use the wrong number and even though they know its meaning they likely won't understand you.

Then there are things that you can say a few different ways. For example "next" can be said as "tal men" or "daum". "Month" can be said as "weol" or "dal". If you say "See you next month it's "Daum dal mannayo." NObody will have a clue what you're saying if you say, "Tal men weol mannayo."

This is what happens when everybody operates by the rule. You cannot stray or vary one iota. You must stay the course. What did I say about the Korean national anthem in my last post? Like a steadfast pine standing on "duty" ever still THAT is the ideal Korean's resolute will. Any military man will give a description of an ideal soldier that sounds remarkably similar to this. And the best, most skilled killers in any military are the ones who have done their training drills so many times and they have become so DAMNED boring that they are able, in fact FORCED for self-preservation, to do them without thinking at all. By rote. Mindlessly.

This has distinct advantages in the military. You really don't want your pesky brain to be thinking about the family or friends of the person you are about to stab in the coronary artery. Or why exactly you are fighting at all. Your's is not to reason why, your's is but to do and die.

This brings us to our point. There are huge advantages to practicing golf so many hours a day that you become completely bored of it and are able to switch into that neutral gear while you do it and still do it well. You don't think of the pressure, the other people, the money, the TV cameras, the big crowds, you just do it by rote. There is nobody that I have met better at doing things by rote than a Korean woman and there are no people better at training people to do things by rote than Koreans.

THIS is why they're better than anybody. In my opinion anyway. Yes the Korean women golfers are the first to turn golf completely into a business. It ain't just golf they've done THAT to...

Watch some women's golf and see if you can spot any of these really great Korean gals having a little bit of genuine fun out there. NOT including their celebrations when they have won a tournament and are allowed to stop golfing for a few days. Or maybe only practice 4 hours instead of the usual 10 for the next few days.

The way I personally define a good athlete is I ask myself if he/she would be doing it even if there were no salary at all. Or like 99% of the rest of the world, if he/she had to PAY to do it. I pay through the arse to golf and in Korea it's like 200 bucks a round! Would any Korean gals be out on the links if they didn't consider it a job or an investment? Will they golf when they retire? Did they EVER enjoy it or did someone see an aptitude and force them to do it? And are they playing now out of duty to that person who paid 200 bucks for every round? Not to mention clubs, travel, professional lessons, driving range fees. It doesn't just happen in golf folks. A majority of people here are doing something they don't want to do out of duty. And to me it's most sad when it's something like golf that can and SHOULD be really really fun.

I don't see the enjoyment or love of the game from most Korean gals who play it. They're almost robotic out there. And it's sad but emotion just gets in the way. To go one step further into the barbarism that the lust for money has brought to the innocent, beautiful world of sport, is it possible that people who don't actually LIKE the sport but are forced to play it are even better at it than people who will let love, enjoyment or thrill of competition jangle their nerves? I think this is one of the reasons Chinese athletes are so great. Remember the emotionless, robotic Russians of years ago? Korea is probably just using these models to make their golfers better. But that's just my pointless rambling for the day.