In fairness, the two South Koreans might have a point, too. While the Ryder Cup is one of the biggest events in golf, Im and Kim are playing for something far bigger this week at the Asian Games — military exemptions.

The opportunity for this life-changing scenario for Im, 25, and Kim, 28, first arose when, in February 2022, news circulated that for the first time professional golfers would be allowed to compete in the Asian Games. Previously, the games were for amateurs only, meaning there was only one real opportunity for professional golfers like Im and Kim to avoid their nation’s mandatory 21-month military-service requirement, and that was by winning a medal of any colour at the Olympic Games. When they both failed to do that at the Olympics in Tokyo in 2021, it meant they would have to wait until Paris in 2024, without a guarantee of making the team or a guarantee of being in form, for another opportunity. Winning PGA Tour events, or contending in majors, two things both Im and Kim have done, unfortunately mean nothing when it comes to fulfulling this duty.

The Asian Games were originally scheduled to take place this time last year, but they were postponed a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Kim and Im were announced as two of the team members by the Korea Golf Association in 2022. They will be joined by amateurs Jang Yu-bin and Cho Yoo-young. In order to be “largely exempt” from service, which must be completed before your mid-30s, they will need to win a gold medal in either the team or individual portion of the games.

Should neither Im or Kim win gold at the Asian Games, or win a medal of any kind in the Olympics next August, they could suffer a similar fate as Sangmoon Bae, another former South Korean phenom who won twice on the PGA Tour in 2013 and 2014 before he had to fulfill his military requirement after the 2015 Presidents Cup. Bae, 29 at the time, began his service that November and it ended in August 2017. The now 37-year-old has bounced between the PGA and Korn Ferry tours ever since, even picking up a KFT win in 2018 at the Albertsons Boise Open. Most recently, he played in the Fortinet Championship earlier this month, tying for 52nd. Other cases of well-known South Korean golfers having to complete service include eight-time PGA Tour winner KJ Choi and 2009 PGA champion YE Yang, who each completed their service in their early 20s before finding success in pro golf.

The golf portion of the games will take place at West Lake International Golf Course, located in the Xihu District of Hangzhou. As popular Twitter account Sungjae Tracker pointed out, it could be difficult to follow along live. But the schedule and results can be found here. Day 1 of golf competition will begin September 28 and it runs to October 1, when medals will be on the line. Im, currently ranked 27th in the world, finished inside the top 20 in four of his last six PGA Tour events. Kim, ranked 40th, recently qualified for just his second career Tour Championship, where he tied for 17th.

Main image: Sean M Haffey

The post Sungjae Im and Si Woo Kim are playing for something far bigger than the Ryder Cup this week in China — military exemption appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

The South Korean found himself playing his second shot on the par-4 third hole at TPC Summerlin from the dreaded “native area” during the opening round of the Shriners Children’s Open. Adding to the difficulty was the fact that he faced a blind, uphill shot from 163 yards that needed to be elevated quickly with several large rocks and a cart path directly in front of him.

But none of that stopped Sungjae from pulling off a spectacular highlight. Have a look:

How?! ?

INSANE approach by Sungjae from the native area. pic.twitter.com/Xz8lWkByKO

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) October 6, 2022

Anyway, it’s too bad Im’s ball didn’t find the hole for an eagle, but he happily tapped in for birdie to get to red figures as he begins his title defence. And if he does win again, they should put a plaque in that native area spot.

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The post WATCH: Sungjae Im may have already pulled off the recovery shot of the 2022-23 PGA Tour season appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

Sungjae Im and Brandon Wu (both through 11 holes when play was suspended for the day) share the lead at 12-under, and while Im is on the verge of completing another of his standard exceptional seasons — this time with less of an insane schedule, featuring “only” 22 events played — Wu has shot up 54 spots in the projected Fed ExCup standings, from 78th all the way to 24th. Considering that the top 30 make the lucrative Tour Championship, his performance at the Wyndham could be a game-changer. The key word in all that standings talk, though, is “projected.” It’s not official until the tournament is over, and if Wu can’t hold it together in his last 25 holes on Sunday, he could watch all that potential evaporate into thick air.

With a few more moments like the one he experienced on 11, though, just before the weather horn blew, he’ll be cruising into Atlanta:

Perfection from @BWu97 ?

Just before the horn blew to suspend play, Brandon Wu ties the lead with a hole-out eagle ? pic.twitter.com/L8TJy1yjkH

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) August 6, 2022

And comparatively, you could even say Wu has it easy — he’s at least clinched his spot inside the top 125, which means he’ll make the trip to Memphis for the first leg of the playoffs next week. Brian Stuard started the Wyndham in 137th place but has surged up to 120th by virtue of a 65-68 start that sees him at 10-under with 11 holes completed in his third round. If things ended now, he’d retain his full tour status and make the playoffs with a chance to do some damage.

Kiradech’s Hail Mary

You absolutely do have to love Kiradech Aphibarnrat, the big man who comes and goes out of the American golf consciousness, but who looms large when he’s relevant. It’s been tough going for him outside of Thailand in recent years, and we haven’t even seen him at a major since 2019. But with a shocking 63 on Saturday, he’s suddenly very much in the mix at the Wyndham, trailing the leaders by two.

To put in context how unlikely this is, Aphibarnrat is currently ranked 359th in the world, and in 18 tournaments this year between the DP World Tour and the PGA Tour, he’s missed 10 cuts and peaked with a T-28 at the Puerto Rico Open. Saturday’s 63 was his best-ever round on the PGA Tour, and he’s been laid up with everything from COVID to a knee injury in the last two years. He regained his tour card last September at the Korn Ferry Tour Championship, but the struggles have continued. Now, it appears as though he’ll need a solo second place finish at the Wyndham to keep his card and make the playoffs. It always looked unlikely, but after his scintillating Saturday, a Greensboro Hail Mary is officially in play.

Runnin’ Max McGreevy captures our hearts and minds

There are rare situations, I guess, in which running to mark your ball could save it from camping out for a bit before betraying you wholly and rolling down a slope. There are not, however, many such scenarios that can be envisioned in which the ball would stay put for an entire jog from tee to green on a 224-yard par 3.

None of that stopped Max McGreevy from taking a 55-second run on the 12th to make sure his ball wouldn’t go rogue at the minute mark.

This earned rave reviews from Jim Nantz and especially Nick Faldo, and it wasn’t long before the comparisons to Sam Snead started flying. Check it out:

Faldo and Nantz can't get enough of Runnin' Max McGreevy pic.twitter.com/AyEn77RH9b

— Shane Ryan (@ShaneRyanHere) August 6, 2022

McGreevy started out the week as the first man out in 126th place in the FedEx Cup standings. He’s 113th now and has a great chance to make the playoffs. If he pulls it off by a stroke, I think we can collectively agree to revise history and pretend it’s all because of his heroic run.

Ryder Cup captains cannot be stopped

We’ll start in Europe with Luke Donald, who pulled off this gem to prove that he’s more than just “management”:

Short game magic from @LukeDonald ? pic.twitter.com/qQN9fl6G10

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) August 6, 2022

And then there’s Zach Johnson, who we all now can still stroke it, and who was within whispering distance of the lead after this putt:

Moving Day fist pumps ? @ZachJohnsonPGA is one back of the lead @WyndhamChamp. pic.twitter.com/ekzfvrTz0f

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) August 6, 2022

Both caps are at six-under, six shots off the lead, and would have to get really hot to have a prayer of winning. If nothing else, though, this proves that while they’ll be neck deep in tactics for the next year, they can still hack it on the course.

Smalley’s gesture

An understated, sad, and heartwarming story from Helen Ross at PGATour.com feels like a good way to close things out. Alex Smalley, who is very much in the mix at eight-under, joined Sedgefield Country Club (the Wyndham venue) in 2020 and played with a man named Jeff Womack several times over the course of the last two years. About two weeks ago, he heard sirens while practising on the putting green, and the news was awful — Womack, 50, had collapsed and died on the course. He was a lumber salesman and a father of two, and this week, Smalley decided to wear the initials JW to honor a fellow member, a man he knew and liked, and who meant a lot to the club.

“I had a couple good breaks yesterday and I kind of thought, just kind of said, thanks Womack,” Smalley told Ross in reference to his first round. “I feel like whenever you can play for something more than yourself you kind of forget about golf.”

It’s possible to overstate the import of these things — initials on a hat can only do so much to mitigate a much larger strategy — but there’s something moving about the fact that Smalley took it on himself to acknowledge the life and presence of someone the golf world might otherwise never know. You can’t go wrong pulling for Smalley on Sunday.

The post PGA Tour: As storms hit Wyndham, FedEx Cup playoff hopes hang in the balance amid a crowded leaderboard appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

The highest-ranked player to reach the weekend in Blaine, Minnesota, Finau overcame a five-stroke deficit to veteran Scott Piercy, who for 61 holes appeared poised to turn professional golf upside down not quite as seismically as Greg Norman but nevertheless with momentous consequences. Ranked 297th in the world, Piercy was attempting to win his first individual stroke-play title since 2015 after showing up with a new swing — from a new swing coach — a new caddie, a new driver and a new putter.

Oh, and also a new pair of shoes, which proved to be the only, ahem, misstep over the first three days while he was setting the 54-hole tournament record of 18-under 195. Piercy developed a painful blister on his right heel near the end of Round 2, which forced him to walk most of the third round carrying the shoe and only wearing it when he was hitting a shot.

But just imagine the chaos next week in Detroit for the Rocket Mortgage Classic with everyone making wholesale changes in the faint hope of duplicating the Piercy plan. Who needs reps, routines and established rapport with a trusty looper?

Unfortunately for the Las Vegas native, his final-round tour of TPC Twin Cities conjured the words of Charles Dickens. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. And he felt the spring of hope before … despair. After seeing his lead increase to five strokes, Piercy played his final 11 holes in seven over par to soar to a 76. Finau, meanwhile, sprinted home with a series of birdies to card a four-under 67 and won his third PGA Tour title with the largest final-round comeback in the brief history of the tournament.

Order restored.

“Man, talking about the last few hours, I think I’m still trying to catch up, still trying to figure out. I think the win is finally settling in,” said Finau, whose 17-under 267 total was three better than Emiliano Grillo and Sungjae Im. “I was just chasing all day, that’s all I remember. Really all week. Scott played amazing golf and the thing about out here, I just know that you just have to keep playing. Anything can happen and that’s what I did.”

On a temperate but blustery afternoon, Finau, 32, was the player most under control and thus most likely to take advantage of an opening. He regularly ranks among the leaders in birdie average and the Utah native converted four birdies in six-hole stretch that made all the difference.

Especially clutch were the three straight he dropped starting at the 14th hole when he knocked in an eight-footer and then followed up from 31 feet and nine feet, respectively, to quickly construct an insurmountable lead.

“When I really needed to hole putts, I did starting on 11, again on 14, 15, 16. I mean, I made some really crucial putts when I really needed them,” Finau said. “Then a little bit of some heroics on the stretch on 17 and 18. A crazy bounce on 17. I called bank in the air, so I think that cancels everything out, but I did get a great bounce there and I took advantage of that.

“My game is as good as it’s ever been in really all aspects. I expected myself to contend and win again this year, so to be able to do it this late in the season when you’re running out of tournaments and you put that type of expectation on yourself, it’s so satisfying. That’s what makes the game so great, so satisfying, when you get the job done because you know that it doesn’t happen very often, but this one’s very special.”

Piercy was hoping for his fifth career win, but will settle for getting on the right side of the FedEx Cup Playoff bubble with a T-4 finish. David Berding

As for Piercy, you, dear reader, might want to skip these next two paragraphs or at least send the kids into another room while you read them.

When Grillo, who began the day four back, triple-bogeyed the par-4 seventh hole, Piercy found himself sitting on a five-stroke cushion, having reached 20-under par thanks to birdies at Nos. 2 and 6. He three-putted the eighth for only his fourth bogey of the tournament. No big deal. But then he missed the green at No. 9 for another bogey and three-putted again at the 11th to drop another shot.

A kick-in birdie at the par-5 12th offered only fleeting comfort. Piercy proceeded to sandwich a triple-bogey between bogeys at the next three holes. The problem at the par-4 14th started with a plugged lie in a fairway bunker that he could only move a few yards. From there, the man with one red heel pulled his third shot into the water, spun his fifth shot off the front of the green and then nearly saved double-bogey except the darn ball stopped three inches short of the cup.

OK, the kids are allowed back in now.

Im posted a final-round 68 for his seventh top-10 finish of the year while Grillo, after a slow-play warning at the turn, recovered from his misadventure at the seventh to salvage an even-par 71.

“Obviously, Scott made a horrible hole there and gave everybody a chance,” said Grillo, who notched his second T-2 finish in his last three starts and five times has been runner-up since his only tour win at the 2015 Fortinet Championship. “But then just Tony pressed really hard on the gas, and he just made it very hard for everybody.”

Finau nearly made it hard on himself at the end just as he found himself, stunningly, in the lead. As he alluded to earlier, he got a huge break on the par-3 17th when he airmailed the green, but his ball caromed off the grandstand and somehow found dry land just two feet from the penalty area. When he tapped in for par, he staggered off the green patting his heart. That escape made his bogey at the 18th hole inconsequential after he blocked his tee ball into the water. Not the prettiest finish, but he’d already staked his claim to the $1.35 million first prize with his rush of birdies.

Tony Finau poses with his wife Alayna and their five children after dad’s victory at TPC Twin Cities. Stacy Revere

Piercy, 43, who either was not interviewed or declined comment after the round, showed a touch of class by giving Finau a congratulatory hug after signing his card. The four-time tour winner had to be content with a consolation prize — a T-4 that enabled him to jump from 138th to 112th in the FedEx Cup standings with two events left in the regular season. That should be enough to make the playoffs for the 13th time in the last 14 years.

Sportsmanship at its finest.@ScottPiercyPGA congratulates @TonyFinauGolf shortly after the win. pic.twitter.com/HLVq8Yh2Wo

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) July 25, 2022

Finau, meanwhile, moved up to 17th in the FedEx Cup standings, 16th in the world and is a lock for the US Presidents Cup team, which was one of his goals for the season. Another was winning again after his playoff victory at last year’s Northern Trust, and he figured his game was trending well when he walked off the Old Course at St Andrews in last week’s Open Championship with a closing 66.

“I made a clutch putt on Friday just to make the cut and then I kind of pushed my way up towards the middle of the pack. I finished 28th last week, but it was like a good 28th,” he said. “Anytime you can do that in a major championship, in a major championship set-up, I think it gives you some confidence.

“I just kind of knew my game was good going into this week. I played about as clean a tournament as I’ve ever played from tee to green. I hit a lot of fairways, I hit a lot of greens and I stayed patient with my putter. It didn’t go my way a lot, really all week I didn’t make a lot of putts, but when I really needed them today, they fell. Last week, I made a lot of putts on Sunday, and out here, if you want to pick a day that you want putts to fall, Sunday’s probably the best day.”

And Finau finished the day as this week’s best.

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The post PGA Tour: How Tony Finau brought order to an otherwise chaotic finish at 3M Open appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Joel Beall
AUGUSTA, Ga. — He was standing at a dais situated on a golf course, but the way Sergio Garcia spoke and the way the Spaniard looked it didn’t take much imagination to picture Garcia slumped on a barstool in a ring, his corner men stitching up a bloodied eye and squirting water into a busted lip.

“I don’t know. I don’t know,” Garcia said, sounding very much like a punch-drunk pugilist. “I felt like I played fairly well. I shot 74. I feel like I shot 86. I don’t know. It just felt like I just came out of 10 rounds with Canelo [Alvarez, the heavyweight champ]. So, it was hard.”

For ground held as sacred and known for evoking celestial tones, whatever theology was to be had at Augusta National Friday afternoon was far from spiritual. Instead it was biblical, of the fire-and-brimstone variety, strong winds and firm greens battering most of the Masters field. The results were high scores and (mostly) heavy congestion on the board as the tournament turns to the weekend.

“The wind is just all over the place,” said Matt Fitzpatrick after a one-over 73. “It’s gusting, and then there’s no wind, and, yeah, it’s just crazy. It’s a difficult one to describe. You have to experience it. It’s a tough one because you can hit a great shot and then all of a sudden you get a gust, and you look like a complete amateur.”

Day 2’s scoring average checked in at 74.61, the highest single round average at the Masters in five years. Frankly, it could have been worse, but the gusts died down over the final two hours, and as the breeze went down so did the scores. The afternoon wave posted a 74.30 mark that was a half-stroke better against the morning group’s 74.89. Or maybe that variance is merely the byproduct of Scottie Scheffler, who turned in a five-under 67 to take a five-shot advantage, equaling the largest 36-hole lead in Masters history. Although there is word Scheffler may be disqualified as tournament officials investigate if he is man and not a cyborg created to destroy all in its path.

MORE: Scottie Scheffler takes command with a record-tying five-shot lead

The final groups aside, Augusta National was no playground. It wasn’t confused for a U.S. Open: bad drives weren’t punished, the leader board had more than just black and no one uttered “good bogey” in sincerity. It was also fair. Good approach shots held, balls were not oscillating, putts did not roll endlessly off greens. Yet it was tough and unrelenting and diabolical. After all, Augusta is a nuanced test no matter the conditions. Add incessant gusts and unyielding surfaces to the recipe and what comes off the grill is a slab of charred golfers wondering if they should have gone into another profession.

“Yeah, it was a challenge today,” said Patrick Reed, author of a one-over 73. “You had the wind pumping, and it was gusty and kind of swirling, and I think that’s what makes this place so difficult, is when it starts gusting. It’s one thing if it stays consistent blowing 10, 15, 20. If it’s just constant blow, that’s fine. … The wind could be going one way, but then once it hits those trees, it turns, and you feel something completely different where you’re at.”

“The wind is not making it easy,” echoed Collin Morikawa. “It’s a lot of guessing, a lot of just trusting what you are going to do, but it’s weird.”

A round like this can be told in numbers, and if you want eye-popping figures you can find them at the two recently lengthened holes, the 11th and 15th. The 520-yard par-4 11th surrendered just two birdies against a whopping 36 bogeys and 10 doubles or worse, while the 550-yard par-5 15th played over par, a fact so ridiculous we will repeat to give you time to pick your jaw off the floor. A par 5, in 2022, played over par. Golf purists everywhere are nodding with a tear running down their cheek. There were more scores in the 80s than there were in the 60s, quick-outs from perennial Masters favorite Jordan Spieth and stars like Brooks Koepka, Sam Burns and Xander Schauffele. But a day like this is best told in imagery.

Danny Willett shot a 74 in the second round of the Masters. Adam Glanzman

Those at home likely saw TV shot after TV shot of flags in yoga poses in the wind, and aesthetically striking as those pictures can be it did not do the conditions justice. Players are usually a stoic bunch, their emotions concealed with blank expressions and straightforward stares. On Friday they could not mask their bewilderment and agitation, their animus, their sense of resignation, maybe because those masks blew off on the driving range. There were indigent gazes into the pines as if the pines had given them the wrong directions and defeated beams into the ground knowing they shouldn’t have asked in the first place.

There was Tiger Woods at the third, hitting his approach from 120 yards out. It seemed OK at contact. Then it touched the sky and Woods could be heard saying, “Wow, look at that thing” as his ball went sideways, landing some 15 yards right off the pin. Woods laughed, because what else could he do?

There was Hudson Swafford at the 12th, hitting what appeared to be a safe shot only to see his ball slingshot to the left, coming to rest on the turf walkway from the Hogan Bridge to Golden Bell green.

There was Tyrrell Hatton delivering a bras d’honneur, also known as the “Italian salute” to his ball, seemingly upset at having to (checks notes) lay up at the par-5 15th. Also at the 15th was Francesco Molinari, contemplating if he should go for the green or lay back. The former Open champ was two under on his day, bouncing back from a Thursday 78. You could tell Molinari wanted to go for it. Thought he needed to go for it. The wind did not abide, so he laid up. He hit his third in the water. Double. Molinari did not make the weekend.

Even Dustin Johnson, the cat who runs on cool, said he was forced to grind. When Dustin Johnson is sweating you know it’s a mighty hot cauldron.

“This is a little different because it’s going from 8-to-10 [mph] to about 25 in a blink,” added Will Zalatoris, who sits in a tie for 10th. “We were waiting out a lot of shots today. I had to stay super patient and make sure we got the right wind. You get one that might be a little down or a little into, and you could be off by 20 yards.

“It’s brutal out there.”

It should stay brutal on Saturday, with cold temperatures and more wind and even firmer greens. Which, frankly, is just fine. There are plenty of weeks where the course is painted in red with easily reachable par 5s and wedge after wedge into green. It was only 17 months ago here that Johnson set a tournament-record mark at 20 under. Sometimes it’s fun to watch others suffer.

Certainly, the gallery didn’t seem to mind. A mighty gale hit the trio of Stewart Cink, Harry Higgs and Brian Harman on their way to the 12th, forcing Cink to hold onto his hat so it wouldn’t fly into the grandstands.

“Can you imagine trying to play into this?” asked a female patron sitting behind the 12th box, a question directed at nobody.

“No,” replied a man seated in front of her, turning around to smile. “But I don’t mind watching it.”

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The post Masters 2022: ‘Felt like I just came out of 10 rounds with Canelo.’ Brutal winds batter Masters field appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Dave Shedloski
AUGUSTA — Scottie Scheffler, the No. 1 player in the world, played two groups behind Tiger Woods, the No. 1 draw in the world, during Thursday’s opening round of the 86th Masters, and he couldn’t have cared less that so few patrons seemingly couldn’t have cared less about his opening three-under 69.

Woods hadn’t played an official competitive round since the 2020 Masters, and the mere fact that he was miraculously back on the golf course after nearly losing his right leg in an a car crash 14 months ago was, of course, the central focus of the day. Then he went out and shot 71, making his latest comeback story even more amazing.

Meanwhile, Scheffler assembled a solid round marred only by a closing bogey at the tough par-4 18th. Amid gusting winds, the 25-year-old Texan hit 11 of 14 fairways and 13 greens in regulation and made a decent statement in his first round since becoming the world’s top-ranked golfer. Not that it mattered where he is ranked. It was just another round of golf, basically.

“They didn’t give me any extra shots or anything this week. So not too much [different],” he said.

Of course, there were two major differences from a year ago: there were more fans, and most of them were following the five-time Masters champion. Like just about everyone else, Scheffler was curious how Woods was faring. A few roars informed him of Tiger’s status. He enjoyed the atmosphere, even if it was focused elsewhere. Which led to an odd question, which went like this:

“You talked the other day about Tiger being here takes a little bit of the spotlight off. Is that mostly fun? Or are you like, Hey, wait a second, I’m No. 1 in the world. Come over here?”

Scheffler gave an inquisitive look before responding. “No, I definitely don’t think I need any more attention than I have at the moment. Having Tiger here with what he does for the game of golf is so special.”

In other words, Tiger deserves the spotlight. But, hey, the supporting cast offered some interesting narratives on Day 1. Here are a few things you might have missed on Thursday while tracking Tiger’s every step … as well as other goings on:

The return of Sungjae Im

Sungjae Im. Jamie Squire

With four birdies in his first seven holes, South Korea’s Sungjae Im got his name on the leader board in a hurry, and though he stumbled in the middle of the round, he eagled the 13th and birdied the 15th to post five-under 67 for the Day 1 lead, one ahead of Cameron Smith.

Im finished T-2 in his Masters debut in 2020 after opening with a 66, so he’s no stranger to playing well at Augusta National. He did miss the cut last year, and he didn’t come in with his usual top-10 producing precision. But he was very good on Thursday, mostly on the strength of a hot putter and hitting 12 of 14 fairways.

“The thing today, I drove it well most of the holes and it gave me opportunities to have better second shots most of the holes. I’m glad with how everything went today,” Im said.

A two-time PGA Tour winner, Im agreed that his form hasn’t been as sharp of late. But he got inspiration, he said, from watching his father Ji Taek hit a shot on the ninth hole in Wednesday’s Par-3 Contest. “It was the most beautiful shot I’ve seen. It was like a professional shot,” said Im, who, being a professional, then went out and hit a few good ones of his own.

Defending champ rallies late

Hideki Matsuyama has been battling a neck injury that forced him to skip the Players Championship and WGC-Dell Match Play. Last week he withdrew in the middle of the second round at the Valero Texas Open, citing a neck injury.

Playing directly behind Woods, Joaquin Niemann and Louis Oosthuizen, Matsuyama slipped to two-over when he bogeyed 11 and 12. He bounced back, however, with birdies at the two par-5 holes, 13 and 15, and that kept him in the picture with an even-par 72.

JT’s learning curve

Justin Thomas. Jamie Squire

Fourteen months ago, Justin Thomas was visiting Woods in the hospital after his horrific car accident. On Thursday, playing with Matsuyama and US Amateur champion James Piot, Thomas found himself trailing his good friend and mentor by five shots after a frustrating four-over 76.

It might have been one of the more surprising results of the opening day given that Thomas has played rather decently this year and that he joined Woods for a practice round last Tuesday and two more times this week, both times with 1992 Masters champion Fred Couples tagging along. Apparently, whatever Thomas gleaned from that experience has yet to stick. Heck, even Couples, playing his first competitive round of 2022, nipped JT by a stroke.

Berger and fried

Daniel Berger. Gregory Shamus

Cameron Smith, who double-bogeyed the 18th hole to fall out of sole possession of the lead, wasn’t the only player smarting at the finish. Daniel Berger was sailing along at three-under on the strength of three straight birdies starting at the par-3 12th and then almost gave it all back on the home hole.

Berger drove into the right trees, pitched out fine, but then put his third shot over the green, from where he needed three more shots to get down for a double bogey. He carried the right attitude with him, however, in the aftermath. “Disappointed to finish like that,” Berger said, “but not going to take away from the round that I played today. I played solid.”

More Brooksy Bryson woes

It hurts to play hurt. Yeah, obvious. But Bryson DeChambeau was feeling more than just the pain in his injured hand.

The long-hitting former US Open champion was far from sharp in his four-over 76 that included playing the par 5s in one over with three pars and a bogey. (Or is that nine over since he once said Augusta was really par 67?) That’s definitely not the script DeChambeau has been trying to follow after he bulked up and started cutting loose with the driver.

The return of a ‘Brooksy’ catcall probably didn’t help either after he bogeyed the par-5 15th. He had to have heard it. So much for southern hospitality. And the score probably did feel like nine over while playing alongside Smith, who offset two double bogeys with eight birdies in his 68.

Wolff whimpers

Matthew Wolff has been finding various ways to dispose of misbehaving equipment without snapping a club over his knee. On Thursday, already four over par after three holes, Wolff exerted significant pressure when leaning on an iron after his tee shot at the par-3 fourth hole found the front bunker. The club snapped cleanly, and he carried the broken pieces with him off the tee.

This comes after last month’s Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass, where Wolff flipped a wedge into the water after a poor approach into the 18th hole. He missed the cut there, and after signing for an opening nine-over 81 on Thursday that included a misplayed bunker shot at the seventh while using a putter, he’ll need a miracle rally to be around for the weekend at Augusta National.

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By Joel Beall
Defeatists think it is a town built on broken dreams, false promises and unfounded hope. Optimists see it as a city of second chances where the unbelievable is routine. Realists understand these views are not mutually exclusive and, often, are one in the same. So while the sport may be lamenting a missed chance at witnessing Matthew Wolff complete a return from the abyss, it did watch—in local parlance—a heater as bright as Las Vegas Boulevard.

Riding a wave that delivered nine birdies in his first 13 holes Sunday afternoon, Sungjae Im dispatched with the field at TPC Summerlin, a flex his opponents had no answer for, and for that Im leaves as the Shriners Children’s Open champ.

“​​It was hard coming, but I think today, how everything went, I think it was a gift from above,” Im said afterwards. “I played so well, and I’m glad I got the win.”

This was not a tale of providence, of bad breaks and good luck. Those terms have no place in a performance where Im turned a three-shot deficit into a five-shot advantage. No, this was a showcase so thorough and strong it warrants residency on the Strip. That may seem like hyperbole considering Im is far from a showman (the opposite, in fact). Lower his ballcap ever so slightly and give the man a pair of sunglasses and he’d be a ringer for a high-stakes poker player, undisturbed by what is in front of him and concerned only by the command he follows within. In an era when players are allowed, even encouraged, to be more colourful, Im lets his game do the demonstration.

In the final round, that demonstration started with a 30-footer for 3 at Summerlin’s opening par-4 first. He missed a makeable eight-footer for bird at the second, but atoned with a birdie from the same distance at the fourth. He then added three more birdies at the sixth, seventh and ninth to make the turn in 30. Most tournaments that is a score that would send reverberations through the course.

But this is a TPC, where birdies aren’t so much currency as they are travel permits. Marc Leishman posted an opening 30 earlier, with Rory Sabbatini, aka the Silver Slovak, hanging a 28 on the board through nine holes. There was also Wolff, the wunderkind who has experienced a great wandering of sorts throughout 2021, who was in the final group and just two shots behind Im with a stretch of gettable holes before him. It had all the trappings of a shootout.

Except Im proved the only one to keep firing on the back nine. He rolled in a 20-footer at the 10th and a pair of 10-footers at the 11th and 12th. He tapped in a two-footer at the par-5 13th for his fifth straight birdie and ninth of the afternoon. It wasn’t flashly as it was steadily fierce.

“To be honest with you, I didn’t even know that I birdied five holes in a row,” Im said. “I was just constantly focused each and every single hole to get through it without a mistake.”

Ahead, Leishman sliced his tee shot on the drivable par-4 15th and put his approach at the par-5 16th in a pond. For all his moves on the front, Sabbatini was stuck in neutral on the back, making one bogey against one bird to stay put.

Alex Goodlett

As for Wolff, he briefly held a share of the lead after a birdie at the sixth and a scrambling birdie at the par-5 ninth. It was this tournament last year that Wolff fell short in a playoff just weeks after he became the youngest player in U.S. Open history to hold the 54-hole lead, ultimately finishing in runner-up at Winged Foot. Golf can be overzealous with its rising stars, but Wolff’s game was backing those expectations up, expectations he did not downplay.

But then there were a couple WDs and poor showings and a DQ at the Masters and puzzling displays, leading to an unannounced sabbatical that became public when he decided to skip the PGA Championship in May. As Wolff later explained, the lack of socialization on tour was impacting his mental health, which was impacting his performance. (Maybe his performance was also impacting his mental health.) So Wolff decided the best way to take care of both was to do it out of the spotlight. He returned at Torrey Pines in June but hasn’t been a true weekend factor since Vegas. And now he was on the precipice of something special.

If this was Hollywood, that would have been the script. But this is Vegas, which has little appetite for the sentimental.

While Im kept knocking down flags, Wolff took bogey at the 10th off another poor drive. He suffered two more wayward tee shots at the 11th and 12th, but salvaged pars. Yet, now was no time for salvaging. Wolff needed to be on the attack, which is why it was curious—down five with six to go—that he pulled out a 3-wood on the par-5 13th. The decision backfired, his ball failing to clear a bunker 300 yards out and burying near its lip. His second advanced 20 feet; his third caught the top of a hill. The final damage was a bogey 6 when he absolutely needed an eagle 3.

“I just … I really … I’ve never seen a break like that. I hit a good drive and I thought I could carry that bunker like I’ve been all week, but unfortunately, it just went in the lip,” Wolff explained. “But, I mean, with a 3-wood you think it would just roll down to the middle of the bunker and then you would hit something into the fairway and then have a good look at birdie. For my ball to, someone left the rake at the top of the bunker and it left an indentation and my ball stuck in that indentation.”

Yes, Wolff fell short. Still, given where Wolff has been, he needs no trophy to consider the week a triumph.

“Yeah, I was just really happy with how the week turned out,” Wolff said. “I keep on putting myself in these positions I know that eventually it’s going to be in my favour and I’m going to win. But really like the way my game’s trending, especially from the beginning—or the end of last year. If you would have told me I would be in this position right now, I would be really happy.”

Alex Goodlett

Back to Im. With a mountain of chips in his guard, the poker player held his cards tight as he watched those around him go for broke and wind up just that. He changed targets down the stretch, happy now aiming at the fat part of the greens and methodically, undramatically, taking pars.

“I saw the scoreboard for the first time on the 14th hole and when I saw that I was leading by five, I said to myself, ‘Let’s not make a mistake and I can get this done,’” Im said.

It was masterful, Im hitting all but one green on the day and turning in a bogey-free card. Wolff added birdies at the 16th and 17th, but the issue was no longer in doubt, Im’s nine-under 63 winning by four shots.

It is Im’s second career tour win, coming 19 months after his 2020 Honda Classic victory. In theory the game shouldn’t need a reminder of Im’s prowess; he’s as present a star as golf has, leading the tour in starts in two of the last three seasons and is a good bet to make it three of the past four. He was one of the best 10 players in the world when the game was halted by the pandemic.

“I was on a really good roll, and I was feeling great about my game after the Honda win and I played well in the Arnold Palmer as well the week following it,” Im says about the 2020 shutdown. “But it is unfortunate. It’s something that I couldn’t control. But after the pandemic, when golf was resumed, I really tried to find that rhythm again and there were times that was not easy. But, again, try to stay composed and believe in my game.”

But Im’s also coming off something of a down season—which is a heck of a thing to say about something who finished T-2 at the Masters last November—and with a wealth of young stars Im’s shine is collaterally dimmed.

Yet Im is just 23, two years younger than Scottie Scheffler and Sam Burns and Will Zalatoris. His swing is smoother than satin with the requisite power needed in today’s game. He makes a ton of birdies (no lower than 30th in birdie average the past three seasons) while keeping the big numbers (13th in bogey avoidance last year) at bay. His short game isn’t otherworldly, but it gets the job done. If there is a hole in his game, it has not been discovered. In short, his future is a one that looks bright.

“Obviously, when I’m playing well I feel great, but when I have a bad round I feel down easily. I think I’ve done that the last 10, 12 months. … But it’s a repetition every week and I learn from each week, and from that experience, I’m learning to control my emotions and everything on the course to stay composed, and I think this week it all paid off.”

Of course, as Wolff’s year has proven, success and growth are not linear, so we’ll save the dreaming of what could be for another day. Because what Im is in the present is a pretty rare thing, too: A man leaving Vegas as a winner.

The post Sungjae Im was the perfect fit to win in Las Vegas appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Daniel Rapaport
For most golfers, the Tokyo Olympics present a delightful change of pace. For one week every four years, they play not just for prize money and World Ranking points but national pride. They rub shoulders with the best track stars and basketball players and swimmers in the world. It’s the experience of a lifetime. All good stuff.

For Sungjae Im and Si-Woo Kim, however, it’s perhaps the most important golf tournament they’ll ever play.

As South Korean citizens, both Im and Kim are subject to mandatory military service. All able-bodied men are required to spend between 18 and 21 months serving their nation upon turning 19 years old, though it can be delayed for valid reasons such as studying or working abroad. Which, of course, Im and Kim are doing—both are PGA Tour winners ranked inside the top 60 in the world.

Still, they will eventually be required to put their golf careers on hold and enlist—unless they win a medal this week. The South Korean government provides exemptions for any athletes who wins a medal at the Olympics or a gold at the Asian Games. With the Asian Games golf competition being limited to amateurs, the Olympics present the only opportunity for Im, 23, and Kim, 26, to get their exemption. K.H. Lee and Sung Kang, both PGA Tour winners, won gold at the Asian Games before turning pro and thus do not have to serve.

“I know it’s true that if we earn a medal the Korean government will exempt us from serving military,” Kim told reporters Wednesday ahead of the opening round of the men’s tournament at Kasumigaseki Golf Club. “But I don’t really, like, focus or think about the service in the military. My only goal is to win the championship and get medal and be honoured.”

Im echoed a similar sentiment.

“Also, I only focus and think about winning games, not the military problem. So, yeah, that’s it.”

They’re clearly trying to treat this as just another tournament, so as to avoid putting too much pressure on themselves and having that impact their play. But one needs only to look at their recent schedule to understand just how significant this tournament is. Im and Kim both opted to skip the Open Championship, the year’s final major, in order to focus on the Olympics. Im flew from the U.S. to South Korea on July 14 and has been in Japan since July 23.

“I wanted to get used to the time difference between Japan and United States,” Im said, “so I went, I flew to Korea because the time difference, the time is the same here, so I made myself so comfortable and relaxed and prepared for the Olympic games.”l

Five years ago in Rio, Byeong-Hun An represented South Korea and finished T-11, thus failing to earn a medal and receive his exemption. An has yet to fulfill his service requirement, but two other prominent South Korean players have—Sangmoon Bae and Seung-yul Noh, who have both struggled significantly since returning to professional golf after a nearly two-year absence.

At 23, Im could potentially have multiple chances to earn an Olympic medal. The runner-up at last year’s Masters has just three top-10 finishes in 25 starts this year. Kim won his third PGA Tour title at The American Express in January but has just one top-10 finish in his last 12 starts.

The post At Olympics, Sungjae im and Si Woo Kim say they’re not thinking about ‘military problem’ appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Daniel Rapaport
Golfing pressure comes in two forms. The first is opportunity pressure. This occurs when a player is at the doorstep of an accomplishment, perhaps a life-changing one. A chance to beat Pop for the first time. A 15-footer to win a PGA Tour event. These are good nerves. Any competitive golfer worth a damn relishes these situations. They’re what you practice for.

The second type of pressure, a bit darker in nature, ​mostly​ plagues those brave souls who play this game for a living. No sane person dreams of avoidance pressure. These are the putts you absolutely, positively need to make, for a miss brings real-life consequences. Having to make birdie to keep your Tour card for another season. Needing a back-nine push to get to the final stage of Q-School and avoid another year of Monday’s and mini-tours.

Sungjae Im hasn’t dealt with much avoidance pressure of late. The 23-year-old won the first Korn Ferry Tour event he ever played in, back in January 2018, then finished solo second the next week to guarantee a PGA Tour card for the following year. He earned a reputation as golf’s road warrior by playing 35 events in his rookie season—and doing so without a home base in the U.S., living out of a suitcase—made it to the Tour Championship and won ​R​ookie of the ​Y​ear. He breezed onto the Presidents Cup team at Royal Melbourne and won his first Tour event two months later with a macho finish at the Honda Classic. A runner-up at last fall’s Masters brought him inside the world’s top 20 and firmly established Im as one of the game’s top young stars.

Si Woo Kim, 26, has enjoyed similar professional comfort ever since he won twice on the PGA Tour as a 21-year-old. The second of those victories made him the youngest-ever winner of the Players Championship in 2017, locked up his Tour card for five years and put $1.89 million in his pocket. He hasn’t quite blossomed into a perennial contender, but he did add a third career victory at The American Express in January and recently surpassed $14 million in career earnings. He’s more than fine.

In the pyramid of professional golf, these two 20-somethings enjoy the view from tip-top. Their careers are the envy of countless grinders out there clawing for a breakthrough. And yet, in the eyes of the South Korean government, Im and Kim are but two able-bodied men with an unpaid debt to their country.

This week, both Im and Kim will be reunited with avoidance pressure of the highest order. In anticipation of perhaps the most important tournament of their lives, both men took the extraordinary step of skipping the Open Championship to devote their entire focus to the Olympics. Can you blame them? A medal would exempt them from mandatory military service. A fourth-place finish or worse—well, they’d prefer not to think about that.

To understand the origin of all this, we’ll need a brief history lesson. Some geography, too. Seoul is the capital of South Korea, a city of roughly 10 million people that boasts the fourth-largest metropolitan economy in the world (behind Tokyo, New York, Los Angeles, for those curious). It lies 35 miles south of the Korean Demilitarized Zone, a 2.5 mile-wide strip that serves as a buffer between highly developed South Korea and totalitarian North Korea. The nations are, at least technically, still at war.

At the conclusion of World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union divided up Korea—which was, until then, a single political entity under Japanese colonial rule—into two countries, split by the 38th parallel. The communist North would live inside the Soviet sphere of influence; the South, including Seoul, would fall in the U.S.’ occupation zone. This arrangement was only set to last for five years before an eventual reunification. But as the wartime alliance between the U.S. and Soviets devolved into a bitter rivalry, the agreement fell through, and the North’s invasion of the South in 1950 marked the first armed conflict of the Cold War. After three years of bitter fighting resulted in a stalemate, the two sides agreed on an armistice but never formally drafted a treaty. Thus, the conflict remains ongoing, and despite recent signs of a potential détente, fears of re-escalation continue to loom large in the collective South Korean psyche.

Chung Sung-Jun
In the absence of a formal treaty with North Korea, South Korea has mandated military service for all able-bodied men to esnure the country is defended.

“Think of the distance between Brooklyn, New York, and Newark, New Jersey,” says professor Hwansoo Kim, chair of the Council on East Asian Studies at Yale University. “And then think of 30,000 cannons facing Brooklyn. In one second, they could be launched. Imagine the level of damage that might occur if war broke out. That’s the level of danger. It’s not far away. The entire weaponry of North Korea was placed toward Seoul to potentially maximize human casualties. In that context, a draft system has been required and mandatory to protect the country from any possible invasion.”

Article 39 of the South Korean constitution, ratified in July 1948, states that “all citizens shall have the duty of national defense under the conditions as prescribed by Act.” It wasn’t implemented until 1957, four years after the armistice, and states that compulsory military service would be required for all men upon turning 19 years old. The service can be delayed for legitimate reasons, such as working or studying abroad, and while the complicated rules differ for men of certain citizenship/resident statuses, all must eventually enlist by their mid 30’s. For some, it’s much sooner than that. Failure to do so can result in jail time or, for those abroad, a loss of citizenship and a ban from returning. Unlike some other nations with mandatory military service, such as Israel, women are not required to serve but can do so voluntarily. The length of the service has decreased over time, from 36 months originally to now, when it ranges between 18 and 21 months depending on the branch of the military. According to a 2018 article from the New York Times, roughly 230,000 men enlist each year, forming a large portion of the standing army of roughly 550,000.

“No young man wants to serve, really,” says Hwansoo Kim. “None of them want to spend two years out of their lives in quarantine, really. They are definitely against it. But at the same time, they accept it as fate. There is a hatred of this whole system, but at the same time, it’s a rite of passage. You have to do it. You cannot avoid it.”

Kim, a former Buddhist monk, described his own time in the military as a “traumatic, memorable and transformative experience.” Alexander Suh, a Chicago-born Korean national who served voluntarily to preserve an option to live and work in South Korea, paints a similarly stark picture.

“We had vacation days, but other than those, you’re not really allowed off base,” says Suh, now a corporate lawyer in New York. “It’s very different from the U.S. military. We weren’t allowed to have phones. You couldn’t just leave.

“I slept in a room with just a ton of bunk beds. I think that was the case pretty much everywhere. They’ve been trying to renovate and give people actual mattresses. We had these portable ones that you pulled out. Most people just felt like they didn’t have a choice. I would look toward the future and think about studying for the LSAT while I was in the military. I would just think about once I got out. That’s a big problem facing Korean military—morale.”

It’s an experience all South Korean men go through—unless you’re one of a very, very select few. The South Korean government considers a very narrow set of accomplishments sufficient to “enhance national prestige” and thus exempt a citizen from military service. The first exemptions were introduced in 1973 by president Park Chung-hee, who promised an exemption to any athlete who medaled in the 1976 Olympic ​G​ames. Shortly thereafter, the criteria expanded to include a gold medal at the Asian Games, also held every four years. At present, those remain the only two avenues for an athlete to exempt himself from military service. There was, however, an exception made for the national soccer team at the 2002 World Cup, which was co-hosted by South Korea and Japan. Prior to the tournament, president Kim Dae-jung vowed to give exemptions to the entire team should they reach the round of 16. The “Reds” overachieved considerably and made it to the semifinal before losing to Germany. Twenty-three men received two years of their life back. ​Another exception was made for the national team at the inaugural World Baseball Classic​ in 2006​, where only a semifinal berth would be good enough. They cleared that bar, finishing third.

Andreas Rentz
Members of the 2002 South Korean national soccer team were among the few athletes to earn exemption from military service due to a strong showing in the World Cup.

A number of South Korea’s top athletes have earned their exemptions more conventionally. Heung-Min Son, a striker for Tottenham Hotspur, got his by guiding the national team to a 2-1 overtime victory in the gold medal match of the 2018 Asian Games. Hyeon Chung, the first South Korean tennis player to reach a Grand Slam semifinal, took gold in the 2014 Asian ​G​ames. And while more classically trained artists and musicians have received exemptions, members of BTS, the best-selling music group in the country’s history—and perhaps the world’s most popular band at present—only received permission to have their service delayed, rather than exempted, when a new law passed in December 2020.

“It’s not like the government is unwilling to make exceptions—it’s that Koreans in general want fairness,” says Hwansoo Kim. “If my son has to serve, it doesn’t matter how powerful you are. How famous you are. You have to follow the same rule, or the entire system will collapse. That sentiment is very deep among people in South Korea.

“If someone tries to skirt their duty or get out of it—if that becomes public knowledge, that person’s reputation is in danger. There would be genuine hatred. That person wouldn’t deserve to be a political leader or even a leader in Korean society.”

Consider the saga of Steve Seung Jun Yoo, a popular pop singer in the late 1990s. In 2002, just before he was set to be drafted into the service, Yoo obtained U.S. citizenship. The South Korean government considered this an act of desertion and banned him from entering the nation of his birth. For life.

South Korea’s two most famous male golfers both did their time, albeit before they established themselves as top-level professionals. K.J. Choi didn’t turn pro until the age of 24, after he fulfilled his military duties, and didn’t play in a PGA Tour event until he was 28. Despite the late start, Choi would go on to win eight PGA Tour events, reach No. 5 in the world and ranks 34th all-time in career earnings with more than $32 million. Y.E. Yang, who stared down Tiger Woods at the 2009 PGA Championship to become the country’s only male major winner, enlisted in 1993 at ag​e​ 21.

Icon Sports Wire
Y.E. Yang (pictured) and K.J. Choi both served in the military before their professional golf careers.

The most recent Korean winner on the PGA Tour, K.H. Lee, was part of the gold-medal winning golf team at the 2010 Asian Games and is exempted. Sung Kang, winner of the 2019 AT&T Byron Nelson, won his Asian Games gold in 2006. Other Korean-born players have avoided military service by national association rather than on-course achievements. Charlie Wi moved to the United States as a 10-year-old and obtained his green card shortly thereafter, which allowed him to skip military service while still keeping his Korean citizenship. Wi played under the Korean flag for the duration of his 10-plus years on the PGA Tour, which included five runner-up finishes. He did, however, have to limit his time spent South Korea so as not to trigger a rule that would trump his green-card status.

“Until I turned 35 years old, I could not be in Korea for more than six months a year,” Wi says. “When I was playing the Asian Tour, I had to really be careful to make sure I didn’t spend too much time there. I didn’t feel a duty to serve because I didn’t see myself—I am Korean, but I lived in the U.S. full time since I was a kid.”

Kevin Na, a five-time winner on Tour, spent the first eight years of his life in Seoul before his family emigrated to Southern California. He became a U.S. citizen upon turning 18, which resulted in him losing his Korean citizenship and thus not having to serve.

“(South Korea) doesn’t like making exemptions or giving special treatment to athletes or celebrities,” Na says, pointing out that he was planning to play the Korean Open but would’ve had to miss the U.S. Open due to a non-negotiable quarantine requirement. “Would it be nice to not go all the way, but find some kind of middle ground where it benefits both sides but you’re not setting a bad example? That’d be nice.

“When you win a major, would you be exempt? That hasn’t happened yet. I think you should be exempt. I think you’ve done, what that does for your country in the golf world is pretty big. Look what it did in Japan for Hideki. I think it would be pretty close for that. If a guy wins a major, I’m all for it. Exempt the guy. Those two years, what he could be doing representing your country, give him an exemption. He deserves it.”

While that situation—a South Korean man who has not served, winning a major championship—indeed has not played out, one thing is clear: as far as the military goes, PGA Tour wins don’t mean squat. Sangmoon Bae won two PGA Tour events in a 17-month stretch from May 2013 to October 2014. That run of form, plus a buttery swing that suggested top-10-in-the-world potential, earned him a captain’s pick into the 2015 Presidents Cup, played on home soil in Incheon. Bae played a central role in the drama that week, going undefeated in three team sessions before International Team captain Nick Price put him out last in the singles session. Needing to win the last hole to halve the Presidents Cup, Bae bungled the 18th to lose the decisive point to Bill Haas. It would be the last tournament he played for 23 months.

Bae, like Wi, held a U.S. green card. But unlike Wi, he miscalculated how much time he’d spent in his homeland—roughly 100 days in 2014, according to the Daegu District Court—and earned significant money playing events in South Korea, which disqualified him from an overseas resident permit that would have delayed his service.

“The plaintiff is not supposed to determine when to serve his time arbitrarily,” the court said in its decision. “If he gets the privilege just because he is an excellent athlete who could make a fortune during his prime, it could demoralize everyone who does not have the privilege.”

Rather than fight the decision, Bae accepted his fate and enlisted in November 2015.

“From the ruling, I learned that it is more of a priority for me to fulfill my duty as a Korean than to do my job as a golfer,” he said, clearly wanting to avoid the much-maligned Draft Dodger label.

Dylan Buell
Since returning from his obligatory military service, Sangmoon Bae has not been the same player.

Then 28 and very much able-bodied, Bae became a private first-class in the 36th infantry division of the Korean army. This wasn’t a clerical gig, eighter; Bae served as a rifleman. He operated machine guns, wore the uniform, marched in formation and slept in the barracks. ESPN’s Gene Wojciechowski traveled to South Korea to visit Bae for a video essay that aired before the 2016 Masters, which Bae qualified for by reaching the Tour Championship. In the piece, Wojciechowski reports Bae’s salary as $2,000 per year, a stark contrast from the $2.6 million he made during the prior PGA Tour season.

“I had a colourful life as a golfer before,” Bae told ESPN, “and it was a really hard decision for me because I had to leave all that behind. But, ultimately, my goal is to become a respected golfer in Korea, and I believe it was necessary for me to enlist in the army. And, so far, I believe I made the right choice.”

Bae was discharged in August 2017 and returned to professional golf shortly thereafter on a “Mandatory Obligation” exemption, which the Tour created for the special circumstance. It essentially functioned as a Major Medical exemption, giving the player a certain amount of starts upon his return to earn a certain amount of FedEx Cup points and keep status.

“That’s one of the hardest parts,” says Wi, “is that when you get back you’re basically on a major medical. You don’t get those reps in Triple A to get your game back. You have to right to the big leagues.”

“It’s not the same,” says Kevin Na. “You can practice all you want, but if you don’t play in competition, you will get rusty. The two guys that have gone to serve, they haven’t been the same.”

Bae missed the cut in seven of his first eight PGA Tour starts back but his Mandatory Obligation exemption got him a spot into the Korn Ferry Tour finals. He won the third of the four finals events to guarantee full PGA Tour status for the 2018-19 season, but missed 14 of 22 cuts that campaign to lose his card. He’s fallen further since—with one finish better than T-57 in 10 starts on the Korn Ferry Tour this year, he​’s now​ 933rd in the world ranking.

Just after Bae left the service, another promising young South Korean player entered it. Seung-yul Noh, winner of the 2014 Zurich Classic of New Orleans, left the PGA Tour in 2017 to fulfill his duty as a South Korean man. In contrast to Bae’s experience, Noh secured a position in a more “civil service” type role—he lived at home and worked a 9-to-5 type gig during the week, which multiple sources described to Golf Digest as “pushing papers.” He was free to practice golf on the weekends. Since coming back to professional golf in 2019, Noh has split his time between playing in the U.S. and in Korea; in 14 starts on the PGA Tour since returning, he has nine missed cuts, two withdrawals and one finish better than T-54.

Another PGA Tour candidate for service would seem to be Byeong Hun-An, who was born in Seoul but moved to Florida in 2005 to attend the David Leadbetter Academy. An’s father, Ahn Jae-hyung, won bronze in doubles table tennis at the 1988 Summer Olympics to receive his exemption. His son, the golfer, qualified for the 2016 Olympics but finished T-11, seven shots back of that precious medal. Now 29, the clock is ticking.

“I’m enjoying my life right now with my family,” An says, a bit jumpy upon being reminded of potentially leaving behind Tour life for barracks life. “My plan is to keep my card this year. I haven’t thought about it yet. We’ll see. Just gotta play well next week, every week. That’s my focus for now.”

Golf at the Asian Games is limited to amateurs, and Si Woo Kim and Sungjae Im’s golfing timelines didn’t line up with making the South Korean national team at the right time. Kim turned pro at 17 in 2012, bisecting the 2010 and 2014 ​G​ames. His decision paid off immediately when he became the youngest player to ever receive his PGA Tour card through Q-School later that year. (He actually had to wait until mid-2013 to join the tour, as rules prohibited anyone under the age of 18 from being a member). Im was not selected to make the team in 2014 and turned pro a year later, also as a 17-year-old.

Photo: Matt Sullivan

As such, both remain on the clock. At 23, Im could have two cracks at earning his exemption. But given the fleeting nature of golfing greatness, there’s no guarantee he’ll qualify for the 2024 Games in Paris and be in good enough form for a medal. His play has been solid if a bit disappointing this year, having made 21 of 25 cuts but posting just three top 10s and, more pertinently, zero top-threes. Kim’s situation is a bit more dire—he’ll be 29 by the time the next Olympics roll around. With just one top 10 in his last 12 starts, he’ll need to recapture the magic from Palm Springs if he’s to have any chance of medaling.

“Well, I would say if we’re fighting for fourth and third place, I’m open for bribing if he needs me to make a three-putt on the last hole,” joked world No. 1 Jon Rahm, who was incredulous upon hearing the medal-for-exemption situation at the PGA Championship. “We can always talk about it. I like Korean food. We can always talk about it.”

For Im and Kim, it’s the furthest thing from a joking matter. Having to serve wouldn’t only cost them two years of prime earnings; it would mean trading in the freedom of traveling around the country playing the PGA Tour for the rude shrieks of an alarm clock. Going from having a team hanging on your every word to taking orders from someone you’ve never met. But all that, at least, has a time limit. There is a definitive end. The true test, as Sangmoon Bae and Seung-yul Noh know all too well, comes after you complete this Korean rit​e​ of passage: can you, after all that time off, become the golfer you once were?

“It’s not the same,” says Kevin Na. “You can practice all you want, but if you don’t play in competition, you will get rusty. The two guys that have gone to serve, they haven’t been the same.”

The post Two South Korean golfers will play these Olympics with everything to lose appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Daniel Rapaport
The Honda Classic took another hit on Wednesday when the top-ranked golfer in the field, Daniel Berger, withdrew due to a rib injury.

Berger, 15th in the World Ranking, was one of just six players inside the top 50 set to tee it up at PGA National. He pulled out of the pro-am Wednesday morning before deciding to skip the tournament entirely shortly after.

With Berger’s withdrawal, the top-ranked player in the field is World No. 18 Sungjae Im.

It’s a disappointing development for a tournament that dates back to 1972, especially considering how many PGA Tour players live within driving distance of Palm Beach Gardens, where PGA National is located. But the Honda has found itself in a difficult spot on the schedule, following a four-week stretch that includes two tournaments with elevated status (the Genesis Invitational and the Arnold Palmer Invitational), a World Golf Championship (WGC-Workday at the Concession) and the Players Championship.

Additionally, it is followed by the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play, a tournament that many of the top players use as their final preparation for the Masters, which begins April 8.

The post Daniel Berger withdraws from Honda Classic with rib injury appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.