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Letting Out The Shaft, by Se Ri Park

“As a former LPGA World #1, I never obsessed about being the longest driver, but I cannot say that about my appearance.”

Distance off the tee is an ongoing issue in the world of golf and as a result I am often asked for my opinion on how to make change. Why? Did I mention that I was a former World #1?  Over the last twenty years I have never gotten tired of the immense personal gratification of asking this rhetorical question.

The orgasmic oohs and aahs of everything on the length of Bryson DeChambeau’s shaft, has become a turn off. The tournament week promotion by the mainstream media then gets amplified by the fifth estate portion of the social media into a full blown orgy of swinging club heads and how high will his balls fly? 45 inch vs 48 inch? You know based on my experience if you can handle the longer shaft that is a nice skill, but just not for golf.

Bryson has enabled a male centric fixation on size, which is really to the detriment of the game of golf. For those who are not adult males this comes as no surprise. The shaft discussion is an extension of other well-worn men’s topics like the size of their bank accounts, the number of horsepower they pack under the hood and yes the size of other men’s penises. If you do not understand the last part of that thought I suggest the following. Bring up basketball star Shaquille O’Neil’s name in conversation with a group of men. Tell me how long it takes before his penis size comes up.

I am fine with Bryson letting out the shaft.  His experimentation is that of a young man who is full of awe and wonderment. Like most his age he would be deaf to the wisdom of the likes of Zack Johnson or myself and our shared philosophies on attacking a par five.  Someday, he will appreciate the art of the lay-up.  Until then his demonstrated short game skill while winning at the 2020 U.S. Open will keep him from being a third tier footnote in an obscure Canadian heritage article on Moe Norman.

What I am not fine with is the incessant commentary on Bryson’s shaft. This disturbs me on many levels.

Over simplification of the game of golf is one level. The casual observer must think Bryson is driving the green on every tee shot. The reality is his fairways hit metric during the 2020 U.S. Open win was the lowest of any winner in history of that tournament. The game is far more complex than just hitting it long. The young man deserves credit for his chipping prowess. I also have to give him credit but with clenched teeth for his improved putting. I believe his new use of the locked forearm to putter shaft technique should be banned, but that is for another day. Until then give him credit for immensely improved putting. Credit is also due for his fitness as well.  Although I have a caveat with this too. I am a fitness maniac. My deceased husband introduced me to mixed martial arts during the first year of my retirement. Young man please take note of Stipe Miocic’ trim physique. He lost fifteen pounds for his third heavyweight fight against Daniel Cormier.  He had no fat and no loss of power.

Forgive me if I now steal elements of sentiment from an infamous line from a famous New Zealand caddy. “When I won the Men’s U.S. Open Golf Tournament…” Ok, so when I caddied…I coached, verbally whipped then critiqued my loving husband’s playing partners…Gamesmanship played a pivotal role. Maybe put another way, our playing partner despised me more than any mud ball he ever hit out of bounds. Let me tell you, I am very proud to say that there is a lot more to playing golf than hitting the ball long with a maxed out extra stiff shaft. Yes I trash talk.  Daniel Kang, who once proclaimed that she is…”going to make girls cry” has nothing on me.

Design is another level of concern. With such a fixation on Bryson’s distance off the tee by all the major influencers it gives the impression that changes must be made. As I have pointed out Bryson’s 2020 U.S. Open win was due to above average chipping, putting and fitness. Three cheers to him. The last thing I want is a misguided attempt to roll back distance due to the sexist trope of big begets bigger. I do not want bigger courses. Period. Although saying this could possibly get me thrown in prison, I own a golf course…Sort of. Does that backspin keep the U.S. Government away from assessing my life scorecard? Of course not, but let’s say my famous last words on the subject are…I have it covered. My problem, the course is in the DPRK. I have completely renovated the entire course, much to the chagrin of the Japanese, and in doing so made myself attuned to maintenance costs. Simply put, bigger courses are not economically sustainable. If protecting the integrity of the golf course is the concern, there are many ways other than length to do that. How? That would be a discussion for another day.

I do not want to roll back the equipment. Period.  I was taught my Sam Snead swing with steel shafts and golf heads made with wood. When I retired I was using graphite shafts and steel heads. Today my recreational resort course game has graphite shafts, heads with a titanium interior structure. The top shells are made of graphite and for a dose of excitement they include vortex generators. Twenty years into retirement, today’s equipment allows me to drive the ball further than my both of my Rolex World ranked daughters. I totally rock the course and I am not giving those bragging rights up. I am not talking three model changes or three design changes. That is three material transformations, with two of them straight out of Area 51. Steel, Graphite, Titanium. Each of them were invented then developed over twenty-five years before they made it to the LPGA/PGA fairways. I have seen the next material. It was invented in 2003. It is still years away from the golf course, but believe me it is coming. I like that. There will always be better strains of grass and improved manufacturing techniques, which includes the use of artificial intelligence. I do not want to stop that. I have shares in the development process, I want to profit off it in the future. Do not worry, the governing bodies for golf, the USGA and R&A have rules in place today to keep the technology under control. For example, the trampoline effect of the materials on the face of the golf head have limitations. Maybe these numbers will have to be revisited in the future but that will be better than outlawing new materials or building bigger courses.

Today I am not concerned with length off the tee. It is not a problem. To use Bryson as an example, distance was not a differentiator in his 2020 U.S. Open win.  Flat out moxie and skill won him that tournament. Yes the traditionalists are fretting and in turn scheming but the last time I looked there were no World Championship Long Drive winners on the LPGA/PGA tours. Increasing the size of the course or rolling back either the ball or the clubs would be an overcorrection to meet an overly male hallucination. The game is still finessed on the concept of the correct shot at the correct time. So I will continue slamin it like Sammy in short shorts.  Yes even back then the old timers were fixated on distance. Sam Snead’s nickname in the late forties was “The Slammer.”

I will come to the point real quick on this most important point in the discussion of Bryson letting out the shaft. I am a women. I am a type A personality women. I am a type A personality woman with a self-esteem disorder. I am a narcissist. All this gendered size matters talk is an affront to my own fully deluded sensibilities. As a female stakeholder I feel that my wants and desires are not being considered. I do not want any self-created male problem that is then fixed, by the creators of the very problem, with solutions that are not in my interest or the woman’s game of golf interests either. I am in love with my technology. Do not be rolling it back.  I like my course size. Do not be extending it.

For the record I like Bryson DeChambeau. I like him because he has a full game, not just distance that he is being overly hyped with. There will come a time when Bryson learns to listen as opposed to relying on science formulas. Zack Johnson will then be able to step in and give him some advice on distance management.

Until then I wish him luck with his youthful fixation on his shaft. I understand. As for the older male dominated movers and shakers in the golf world, I have these words. Using the big club off the tee is not intended to be the all to end all. To further that point I wish to use a historical example of common sense over size matters. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. When she reaches out for a club to use, it will not be the driver. She will go for a target scoring club…The nine iron.

The End

Se Ri Park is a fictional character from the Fortune Cat series of novels available on Amazon.com.

Fortune Cats with Nine Irons is the origin story by author Dave Hutchinson

Pace of play is an ongoing issue in the world of golf and as a result I am often asked for my opinion on how to make change. Why? Did I mention that I was a former World #1?  Over the last twenty years I have never gotten tired of the immense personal gratification of asking this rhetorical question.

But back to the why. I hope that beside myself being a good sound bite it is because I was known as a fast player.  Though it is possible that I am asked because I am the mother of the newest LPGA phenom who also possess a fast pace of play.

To be fair I am incapable of being the goddess of change on this topic. This is because;
I cannot administer change to the rule book.
I cannot amend poor clubhouse management.
I cannot mandate golf course design.
I cannot introduce education policy.
I cannot implement changes to how world ranking points are accumulated.

But I can be a mere mortal… agent of change.  I can do this by being a leader of the pack while I rock the course.  Fashion, fair play and an athlete’s work ethic has resulted in my proper pace of play, on most days.  Most days?  Yes, because personal play cannot overcome archaic rules, poor tee time intervals, back to back par 3’s or players simply not having the confidence to follow the rules.  Reducing the problem of pace of play to a single cause is unreasonable.

A frequently asked question of myself is how I learned my pace of play?

How?  I am a golfer.  All golfers learn how. This is not a Korean state secret, to answer the implied insinuation. Worldwide we are taught the exact same concept.

Keep pace with the group in front of you.

On days that I am a guest speaker, which my sports management request that I be my most congenial, this is the answer I give…

Keep in mind, the context of time and place, Republic of Korea (South Korea) during the late seventies.

As youngsters, my mother, whose name shall never be mentioned, essentially abandoned my twin sister Minjee and I to the care of our notorious, at times theatrical and at other times sadistic grandma.  Grandma would sit in the back of our chauffer driven car while we were waved out to attend the golf after school activity.  Believe me when I say that there was no grand design to create golf prodigies.  It was most likely the chauffer’s idea to drop us off at the undistinguished golf range and par 3 course after grandma’s full sleeve of tattoos ensured refused admission for her granddaughters at the easy to access neighborhood golf course.

I will never forget our first time entering the dimly lit, musty confines of the pro shop that had the familiar cigarette odour that permeates my memories of my youth in Korea.

Minjee and I placed our elbows on the counter and stared up in disbelief then both shook our heads.

“Nobody asked how you looked, just what you shot.”

This is what the shabby handmade sign behind the counter said.

How could golf be so out of touch? Minjee assured me that she would always ask how I looked. As for me, well I was the cautious one and said we better ask our teacher at school if this seemingly incomprehensible sign had been translated to English correctly.

A grumpy looking old Korean man peaked out from behind a flower print curtain before grunting an order in English for us to join him. The darkened room behind the curtain had a noisy projector showing a movie on the bare back wall. A hand full of kids clunked their wooden chairs in unison in order to stare at us. They were all boys.

Minjee and I sat down and watched for the first time a caucasian man in a straw hat swinging a golf club. The grumpy old man pointed at the screen and said, “Sam Snead.”

Minjee and I loved it even if we had no concept of what a golf club felt like in our hands.  The smooth, easy, full body flow of his golf swing translated so easily to all of the dance choreography we had practiced since we could walk. Swing it Sam, swing it again.  Sam had captured our imagination with his one piece foundation.

After the projector spit out the final reel we were marched out of the smelly but austere pro shop to the range where Mr. Grumpy cast an eye to Minjee and myself and in deliberate English said, “You two, Vane and Vanity keep pace with the boys.”  As I said earlier, this is universal instruction. The process has easy to follow visual cues.  Keep pace with the group in front of you.  Starting from day one our collective internal voice was shouting, yes sir, tee to green, sir. Of course as you will have surmised, all Mr. Grumpy saw was a pair of synchronous bows.

That was my introduction to the world of golf and the fundamentalism of pace of play. After ten years on the LPGA tour, being inducted to the Hall of Fame, winning the money list in each year, my sports management argued for my retirement.

Initially I objected, but once I considered the state of my pace of play I convinced myself that my sports management was right.  Their observations were that my swing form remained the same but I had lost a step out on the fairway.  I was no longer pushing the game, the game was pulling me along. There was no doubt, my intensity was waning.  Pace of play provided me with a valued early warning metric that contributed to my decision to walk away from the game.

I retired, found my handsome square jawed yobo, got married, raised a family and then shock of shocks regained my pace of play.

My husband Leo learned golf from me on a casual basis during family outings to our home course on Jupiter Island, Florida.  Let it be said that never once was I scanned for tattoos during the member initiation process.  Plus never once have they refused grandma dinner service, at least in my presence.

Leo never played golf growing up. He played fast twitch sports that included track and field, football and hockey. My husband was named after Canada’s finest athlete of the first half of the twentieth century, Lionel Conacher.  Lionel Conacher was his great great grandfather who played lacrosse, football, and hockey professionally.  His talent also had him winning at the championship level in amateur boxing.

My husband’s sports career included playing in the Canadian and National football leagues. In these leagues they have play clocks.  His years of sprinting was then reinforced with the ready play aspect of football, which gave Leo’s pace of play in golf a natural cadence.  It was awesome to be a playing partner of his.  With his enormous size he towered over my six foot frame.  I found the refinement and grace of execution of his obvious brute power to be immensely attractive.  Without question Leo’s pace of play had me attacking the course with the same vigour that I now see my daughter play with.

Now I am not advocating for time clocks.  I am more than satisfied with the current time clock system in golf, where it is used in a final effort to get golfers back to a proper pace of play.  I am a fan of less rules not more.  I mentioned play clocks earlier to underscore one of the ways Leo’s attitude and offensive push in the game of golf was learned.  His base athleticism needed to play with pace in order to maintain focus, competitiveness and intensity.  Bureaucratic outside interference was not unnecessary. The contagion of his play was exhilarating.  The parading of my recreational foursome on my home course on Jupiter Island was joyous golf.  Yes, parading.  When my neighbour who just happens to be basketballs, The Captain, is part of your foursome, life is a parade.  Of course he claims between puffs on his stinky cigar that I am the parade Marshall.

Thank you Leo.  I can now say…as a former LPGA World #1, I was a fast play golfer but then I got married and became even faster.

The End.

Se Ri Park is a fictional character from the Fortune Cat series of novels available on Amazon.com.

Fortune Cats with Nine Irons is the origin story by author Dave Hutchinson