“As a former LPGA World #1, I was a fast player, but then I got married…”

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