MIGUEL TOVAR/LATINCONTENT/GETTY IMAGES
OCTOBER 2017 FORBES ASIA | 73ternational side that year.) And just this month, the Tour will hold its
first sanctioned tournament in South Korea, the CJ Cup, the newest
addition to its tournament schedule, which will be played on Jeju Is-
land. The tournament’s $9. 25 million purse is bettered only by the four
majors, the Players and the four World Golf Championship events.
At the front of the line of Asian “heroes,” Matsuyama is an inter-
national star, the first from Japan. (Japanese men were long notori-
ous for not traveling; Masashi “Jumbo” Ozaki won 11 4 tournaments
in his career, but all but 2 of them were in Japan.)
And then there’s Kim, who is off to a fast start in his PGA Tour
career with his two wins, $6 million in career earnings and $1 mil-
lion in endorsement fees, a figure that is likely to rise in 2018 (his
sponsors: CJ, TravisMathew and TaylorMade). Kim qualified for the
PGA Tour at the age of 17, but he couldn’t play for a year because of
the Tour’s age restriction. He says he had “no fear” during the final
round of the Players “because I knew I was playing well.”
He helps his own cause by being eminently likeable: After his
Players win, a photo of a smiling Kim flying to Atlanta in the middleseat of the coach cabin went viral. He had purchased the ticket be-
fore he banked the winner’s check, of course.
There is one hazard that Kim might not be able to avoid: South
Korea’s mandatory 2 1-month military service stint for males between
the ages of 1 8 and 35 (Kim shrugs it off: “I am young and not wor-
ried about it now.”) Only an Olympic medal can get a golfer out of it,
which makes qualifying for the 202 0 Games an imperative for Kim.
David Leadbetter, the famed golf coach who has three golf acad-
emies in China and one each in India, Bangladesh, Indonesia and
Thailand, says Kim has the traits he sees in many young Asian play-
ers. “He’s athletic, he works hard, and he’s very even-keeled.” Lead-
better contends that an even bigger Asian wave of players is on the
horizon. One of his Thai students, a 9-year-old, just won the World
Junior Golf Tournament. He also points to the dozens of golf schools
that line the practice facility at the Korean golf resort, Sky 7 2 Club, all
instructing young kids. “And I have 8 - and 9-year-olds in China who
have great technique already and are purely focused on golf,” he says.
“I don’t think we’ve even scratched the surface in Asia yet.” FPAK’S PACK
In 1998, a 20-year-old South Korean woman named Se-Ri Pak
joined the LPGA Tour and effectively kicked off a revolution in in-
ternational golf. That year, Pak won the U.S. Women’s Open and the
LPGA Championship (now known as the Women’s PGA Champion-
ship). Pak was one of only three Koreans when she joined the LPGA.
Ten years later, thanks mainly to her, there were 45. Now, five of
the top ten women in the world are Korean, including Nos. 1 and 2
(So Yeon Ryu and Sung Hyun Park, respectively), and Koreans won
three of the five women’s major tournaments in 2017.
South Korean men—and Asian men, in general—are years be-
hind their female counterparts. There are many theories for why
this is. The first, pertaining to Ty Votaw’s “hero creation” theory, is
that Asian women had a hero in Pak. Inbee Park, the tenth-ranked woman in the world, is one of many Asian LPGA players who point to
Pak’s 1998 year as an inspiration. Another possible reason: Though women golfers are extremely talented, there are fewer of them. As
an example, 1,700 women attempted to qualify for this year’s U.S. Women’s Open. By contrast, nearly 10,000 men tried to qualify for the
men’s event. Yet another reason: Korea’s mandatory 21-month military service for men between the ages of 18 and 35, which is smack
dab in the middle of a golfer’s prime years.
But less often cited as a catalyst for the success of Korean women on the LPGA is the robustness of the women’s professional game
in their home country. Korea has its own tour—the LPGA of Korea—that offers a reported $19 million in total prize money, less than the
LPGA but more than the men’s Korean Tour (a reported $12 million). The LPGA of Korea also has three different tiers, creating an impor-
tant pipeline for players.
And yet despite the success of Korean women in American professional golf, they lag dramatically in prize money when compared to
the men. Pak had an incredible run on the LPGA Tour, winning 25 times (including 5 majors), but earned only $12.5 million in her career.
By contrast, K.J. Choi won 8 career PGA Tour events (and no majors) and amassed earnings of $32 million.
The disparity can most easily be explained in terms of eyeballs: The men have millions more than the women. The PGA Tour has
broadcast deals with NBC and CBS—and more than a dozen international broadcasters—which pump an annual $400 million into its
coffers, while the LPGA is primarily broadcast by the Golf Channel and makes somewhere under $20 million in TV money. Total prize
money for the PGA Tour next season is more than $363 million. For the LPGA: $66 million.
However, there are two tournaments where the money could be more equalized. The men’s and women’s U.S. Opens are run by the
United States Golf Association, while the men’s and women’s PGA Championships are run by the PGA of America. Surely those orga-
nizations, flush with money, could make the purses a bit more even, as the tennis major championships have done. After all, as David
Leadbetter points out, Se-Ri Pak certainly had something to do with the rise of Asian men on the PGA Tour as well. —M.B.Se-Ri Pak, winner of
five LPGA majors and
an inspiration to a
generation of golfers.