Cheerio!
The woman dubbed by one British sports journalist as the “diminutive Korean” turned out to be the dominant golfer on the links of the Royal Birkdale Golf Club in Merseyside, England, on July 31. Jeong Jang and her 5-foot-2 frame was victorious at the final major tournament of the 2005 season, the Weetabix Women’s British Open.
The 25-year-old from Daejeon made quite an impression upon the British by winning her first title on the LPGA Tour.
“It is rare to be able to say this, but for 72 holes she hardly put a foot wrong,” said the United Kingdom-based Times Online. “She knows all about composure and hits the ball a hefty distance.”
Jang, who began playing golf at 13, has a style characterized by what some have called a loose, old-fashioned, willowy swing — markedly different from the “modern, shorter and firmer swings used by many of her rivals,” according to the Times Online.
It was that swing that allowed her to pull ahead and finish at 16-under, four strokes ahead of Sophie Gustafson. Michelle Wie ended in a tie for third with Young Kim at 10-under.
Annika Sorenstam, the world’s top female golfer, finished tied for fifth. “I think she would have been very hard to catch,” said Sorenstam on July 31. “My hat is off to her.”
Another Racist Remark
When Soo-Yun Kang won her first LPGA title at the Safeway Classic in Portland, Ore., on Aug. 21, she joined the ranks of Korean-born females to claim a victory on the stage of the most prestigious women’s tour in the world. And with Jeong Jang, Gloria Park and Joo Mi Kim rounding out the top-four finishers at the Safeway Classic, for South Koreans, there was much to celebrate.
But in an act not unlike Australian golfer Jan Stephenson’s notorious statement that “Asians are killing the tour,” one LPGA fan wrote a cowardly e-mail to Golf World magazine in the wake of Kang’s personal achievement.
“The plain and simple truth is Americans want to see Americans playing or Europeans [who] look like Americans,” said the reader, who requested his name be withheld. “Most have nothing against Asians, they just don’t want to watch events totally dominated by Asians. I see this as a BIG problem for the LPGA.”
Ron Sirak, in response to the e-mail, wrote in his “View from the Bunker” column, “It says something about the nature of the narrow mind — what exactly does an American look like? — that someone is willing to verbalize such hatred only behind the cowardly wall of anonymity. It also raises the disturbing question as to how many others feel the same way.”
Sirak went on to explain that the LPGA’s single largest source of revenue is from Korean television and chastened viewers to “look past race to reality.” More than 100 Tour players are American-born, 11 are from Sweden, 10 from Australia and 26 from Korea,” he reasoned. “As for a domination of the LPGA by the Koreans, it is simply not true.”
