The past couple of years have been among the weakest in the history of the Korean golf explosion. From 2008 to 2019, the Koreans consistently supplied to the LPGA one big golfing star after another, dominating season ending awards and Majors during that period. But since the start of 2021, Koreans have only won one Major out of 16 played and no medals at the 2021 Olympics. At the recent International Crown, of which they were the defending champions, they were swept in the first two rounds and did not even make it out of the preliminaries. As of this writing, there are only two Koreans in the top 15 of the world rankings.
Not so long ago, things were very different. In 2019, Jin Young Ko won four times and collected the Player of the Year award. She led the money list as well, while Sei Young Kim was second and Jeongeun Lee6 was third, Sung Hyun Park 7th and Hyo Joo Kim 10th. Lee6 also won the Rookie of the Year and the US Women’s Open, while Jin Young won the Evian and the ANA Inspiration. The Koreans won 15 total events from seven different players.
This year, the Koreans have not won even once in the first ten events of the season. They have not won a Major since 2022. They did win Rookie of the Year last year, but otherwise have gone without season ending awards since 2021.
What has caused this drastic downturn? Well, there are a few interlocking reasons. The first is that most of the big-name stars from Korea arrived on tour between 2007 and 2018, with the last major wave coming in 2015. A lot of those stars are now in their thirties, a time when players tend to be winding down their careers. Even the youngest from this group are getting close to thirty.
Why did the pipeline of new stars slow? The pandemic in 2020-21 convinced a lot of Koreans to stay in Korea rather than come over. There have been a couple of solid players who arrived in the past two years, and three promising rookies this year, but none of them have yet risen to the level of top stardom. And several of them are already in their mid-twenties.
The second issue is that the LPGA decided around 2021 that they should make courses easier to enable the players to make more birdies and thus increase the ‘excitement’ of the tournaments. This hurt the Koreans in several ways; for one, the Koreans are not as a rule long off the tee (there are a few exceptions), so if you make the courses easier for bombers, it makes it much harder for short hitters to contend; they will constantly have longer irons into the greens without gaining an advantage by being more accurate off the tee. Also, the Koreans don’t tend to make a lot of birdies; they get their wins by playing tough courses well. If the courses are easier, more players have a chance to win, and the number favor the Americans, who have far more players on tour than the Koreans.
A Lim Kim is one of the few current Korean bombers
OK, so the solution is to get more top long-hitting young Koreans to join the LPGA. As it turns out, there is a bunch of new Korean young stars for whom length will not be a problem. And this year has seen these players having gradually more success, leading to an epic week where two extremely young golfers achieved breakthrough success at the same time on different tours. Let me introduce you to the Millennial Babies, the up-and-coming golf stars born after 2000. With luck, we will soon see them playing in America and all over the world.
In the last two years, the KLPGA has seen the arrival of five fantastic young golfers, all currently between the ages of 19 and 21. The amateur ranks have even more great prospects, including three who have excelled in 2024. They are young, gifted and by and large long off the tee.
2022 saw the arrival of Yewon Lee. The petite star, born in 2003, won the Rookie of the Year, then in 2023 swept all the major tour awards, including Player of the Year. Lee is the shortest off the tee of all the young guns, but she makes up for that with excellence in every facet of the game, particularly putting. She has already won an event in 2024, the second KLPGA tournament of the season, which took place in Thailand. She is ranked 34th in the world and is preparing to play in some international events this season, including the Evian.
The second 2022 star was Ina Yoon, a few months younger than Lee. One of the longest players in tour history, she unfortunately was caught up in a cheating scandal and was suspended for a year and a half. She’s back in 2024, and though she is still finding her legs, has the potential to be a huge star if she can return to form.
2023 saw the arrival of three more heavy hitting starlets: Shin Sil Bang, Youmin Hwang and Min Byeol Kim. Bang, the youngest of the three at 19 currently, is also the longest hitter on tour this year, while Hwang is second longest and Kim fifth. Bang won twice in 2023, Hwang once, and Kim didn’t win but did collect the Rookie of the Year.
As if they weren’t enough, there are also at least three teen stars, some as young as 15, who are lighting up the world of amateur golf. In 2023, these three contributed to win after win for the Koreans in major amateur events. The Koreans might not be winning on the LPGA, but in amateur golf they are if anything even more dominant than before. The gals we will be talking about are Min Sol Kim, 17; Hyo Song Lee, 15; and Soomin Oh, 15.
Starting in February, these talented amateurs and pros have repeatedly achieved impressive results. In early February, the three amateur stars played the Women’s Amateur Asia-Pacific Championship. The winner would earn entry into several LPGA Majors. Alas, they just missed out; Hyo Song Lee finished 2nd and Min Sol Kim 5th.
The next big moment came at the first event of the KLPGA season, the Singapore Open (the KLPGA plays its first two events outside of Korea due to cold weather). Bomber Shin Sil Bang towered early on, taking the first round lead. In the second round, both Hwang and amateur Soomin Oh had great rounds to climb onto the leaderboard, but in the third round, all the noise was made by the precocious Oh, who rode her super long drives to a three-shot lead, in a field that featured international stars like Thailand’s Patty Tavatanakit. Had Oh won she would have been the fourth youngest winner in KLPGA history, but she faltered and KLPGA member Jae Hee Kim got the trophy. Oh finished 3rd, Bang second.
Oh rode the momentum into her next appearance, playing for the Korean team at the Queen Sirikit cup in New Zealand. Joining her was Hyo Song Lee and a third amateur named Shi Hyun Kim. The match was close for the first couple of rounds, but Korea turned on the jets on the final day and blew the other countries away. They won the team title and Oh won the individual gold after shooting a final round 65. Lee finished third and Kim fourth. No wonder they easily won the team event!
Meanwhile, the KLPGA played an event in Thailand, and this time it looked like Bang would get the win. But she made crucial mistakes late in the final round and Yewon Lee won the title. Hwang finished tied for 4th with Bang. The Kids continued to excel.
The first event on Korean soil continued their excellence. The We’ve Championship saw Youmin Hwang finally parlay her solid 2024 start into a win, her second since joining the tour. Amateur Min Sol Kim was also in the field and got a top ten.
As exciting as these events were, the real question remained: when would the young guns make their first big splash on an international tour? Bang had a chance when she entered the LPGA’s first Major, the Chevron Championship. She had an indifferent start, but in the second round caught fire, shooting a 65 to vault onto the first page of the leaderboard. She was not able to follow that form up and finished 40th, but in her first ever event on American soil, she showed she will soon be a force to be reckoned with.
At the KLPGA’s first Major, the KLPGA Championship, the title was taken by veteran Jung Min Lee, who at over 30 years of age is practically prehistoric by KLPGA standards. But several of the young guns had great weeks. Min Byeol Kim has struggled most of the season to live up to her great 2023, but she finished the week here going 6 under in the final five holes and ending tied for third. Ina Yoon, meanwhile, has slowly played better as she has gotten used to being back on tour. That week she notched her first top ten, a solo ninth.
But it was this past week when the young amateur stars achieved their best results yet, stunning the Japanese and Korean tours with their excellence. Min Sol Kim played on the KLPGA at the Kyochon 1991 Ladies Open, while Hyo Song Lee joining Yewon Lee and Min Byeol Kim at Japan’s first Major, the Salonpas Cup.
In Korea, Min Sol Kim contended, shooting the second-best round of the day on Sunday and threatening to take her first pro title. It took a fantastic round from Ji Young Park, shooting the only round better than Kim’s on that day, to hold her off. But Kim finished tied for 2nd, the best pro result of her career. She gained 79 spots in the Rolex Rankings as a result, moving to 178th in the world despite the fact she rarely plays pro events.
Meanwhile, the Koreans made noise in Japan, despite the fact Min Byeol underperformed and missed the cut. Hyo Song also struggled in round 1 but shot back-to-back 69s after that to rise to tenth, seven out of the lead. That lead was held by Yewon Lee, who put on a clinic in Japan. Her putting was particularly spectacular. She had a three-shot lead with one round to go and looked likely to claim her first JLPGA event in her first try.
Lee hung on during the front nine, paired against the top player on the JLPGA, Miyuu Yamashita, giving the fans a battle between the top players from both tours. But on the back nine Lee struggled, falling out of the lead. Meanwhile, Hyo Song Lee sat at 5 under, three back, lingering there most of the day. Then she made birdie on 17 to move to within two. On the par 5 18th, she knew her best chance to steal the win was to get to the green in two, a feat only 11 other players had managed all week. She bombed her drive, then hit a risky 2nd with her 3-wood to get on board within ten feet for an eagle try. She proceeded to drain the eagle to move to 8 under, tied for the lead. It was the greatest putt of her life and she delivered when it counted.
Yewon Lee and Yamashita were shell-shocked to find they were suddenly joined at the top. Both struggled so that by the time they reached 18, they were both two shots back and needed an eagle to tie. Neither got one, and Hyo Song Lee, at 15 years 176 days old, became the youngest player in the history of the JLPGA to win an event. She also had achieved the largest comeback in JLPGA Major history, seven shots. And she was the first Korean to win a Major on that tour since 2019. The Kids had arrived!
Lee has been getting attention for years. Four years ago, she was featured on a TV show as a golf phenom who, at 11, was able to hit the ball 270 yards and was filmed flabbergasting the grown men she was outdriving at a driving range. She was just starting her amazing career, but soon was winning events hand over fist. She gained the nickname ‘the Second Inbee Park’, quite an intimidating label to live up to. But live up to it she did, winning back-to-back Korean Women’s Amateurs in 2022 and 2023, the first when she was just 13.
And now she is a Major winner in Japan and the sky seems to be the limit. What happens next? She leapt 630 spots in the Rolex Rankings to 199th. But no major tour allows players younger than 18 to join full time. Does she stay amateur? If so, how long before she has no one to test her in those ranks? Or does she turn pro but limit herself to appearing occasionally as a sponsor invite until she gets old enough to join?
One thing’s for sure: the genie is out of the bottle and the Millennial Babies have arrived. Expect more great things from them in the months to come!
SeoulSisters 
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