KJ Choi had to climb a mountain to chase his dream.
Baseball was starting to take off in South Korea when he was a teenager. Without money to buy a baseball and a bat, Choi went to the nearest mountain, cut down a pine tree and fashioned his own bat. He played with a tennis ball, but it just was not the same.
So imagine how he felt when he went to a driving range and tried golf with proper equipment.
"Getting to hit a golf ball for the first time with an actual iron, I couldn't forget that solid feeling," Choi said. "It felt much better hitting a golf ball with a real club than hitting a tennis ball with my bat.
"And that's when I fell in love with it. I told myself, 'Just start golfing, and let's see how far it will take me'. And I kept with it."
It has carried him to 17 wins around the world, including The Players Championship, and more than US$27 million (Dh99m) in career earnings on the PGA Tour.
He was the first South Korean to join the PGA Tour when he made it through Q-school in 1999.
Now, finally, he has company. These days, it is much easier for players such as Noh Seung-yul, Bae Sang-moon and Kang Sung-hoon, who are among eight Korean-born players on the PGA Tour.
Beyond American shores, only Australia has more PGA Tour players. They also have role models in Choi and YE Yang, the first Asian man to win a major when he took down Tiger Woods in the 2009 PGA Championship. Most of them are products of the Korea Golf Association, which is pouring resources into golf and has produced a national team that could be the model for other developing golf nations.
Korea won the gold medal in the Asian Games in 2006 in Qatar with a team that featured Kang and Presidents Cup player KT Kim. Noh, who was 18 when he defeated Choi in the 2010 Malaysian Open, was an alternate. Bae, who started this year at No 30 in the world and lost in the quarter-finals to Rory McIlroy at the Match Play Championship, did not make the team.
"I tried," Bae said with a laugh. "But there were too many good amateurs in Korea, so I couldn't."
A year ago, Bae became the second successive Korean to win the money title on the Japan Golf Tour. Kim won the Japan money title in 2010, while Noh topped the Order of Merit that year on the Asian Tour.
Korean success in America starts with the women. Another reminder came last week when Na Yeon Choi won the US Women's Open at Blackwolf Run, where Pak Se-ri won the US Women's Open in 1998 and became a pioneer for women's golf in her country. Korean membership on the LPGA Tour is approaching 50 players. More than 30 of them have won close to 100 times, and 10 have won majors.
For years after he became a PGA Tour winner, Choi rarely made it through an interview without being asked why there were not as many Korean men.
The simple answer was the mandatory military service, which comes at a crucial development stage for golfers. Choi had to put in his two years at the age of 22.
Some players have avoided military service by moving from Korea (US Amateur champion Danny Lee to New Zealand, Kevin Na to America). Others have deferred until their 30s, and now there is a major incentive. Kang, for example, is exempt from his military service because he won a gold medal from the Asian Games.
But it is more than just a military obligation. There was a time when golf was considered only a game for the very rich, not a career path. Korean families invest heavily into their children's future, with a big emphasis on education.
"Golf wasn't considered a good job for men," Choi said. "You didn't have a guaranteed income. No one knew you could make a living. Nowadays, as soon as you're born, parents stick a golf club in the baby's hands."
Choi learnt that when he met his future wife her parents did not approve. Golf? How could someone provide for his family playing golf? Choi struck a deal that if he were to win a tournament, "I'm coming back and I'm going to take your daughter".
"They wanted me to prove I could support her," Choi said through his agent and translator, Michael Yim. "This only took a year to prove. I got on the Korean Tour. And I won."
More than $27m later, do they approve? Choi smiled and said in English: "Big time."
Ty Votaw, the executive vice president of international affairs on the PGA Tour, became the LPGA commissioner the year after Pak's watershed moment at Blackwolf Run, and he saw the initial surge from South Korea. Votaw prefers to look at the development of Korea in a time scale that dates to the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, when it opened its markets. Ten years later, Pak won the Women's Open. Now, two television networks are devoted to golf. The sport is no longer viewed as elitist.
"With golf on TV as much as it is there, golf is much more than a fashion backdrop than in this country," Votaw said. "You go to golf shops, and … it's high-end fashion. It has captured the imagination of the youth. Even if they don't play golf, they see it as high fashion, and high achievement."
sports@thenational.ae
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