Autistic golfer dreams of Green Jacket
ANSEONG, South Korea: Golf is among the most solitary of sports, its players engaged in a constant struggle with themselves as they compete against the implacable opponent of par.
But for autistic newly qualified professional Simon Seungmin Lee, it is a way to escape from his enclosed self and engage with the world.
The 20-year- old South Korean, who grew up in the US, has been medically assessed as having the communication skills of a child half his age -- and the socialisation abilities of a 10-month-old baby.
But six years after taking up the clubs, and following five failed attempts, he secured professional status at a Korea PGA trial in May -- one of the few autistic people to do so anywhere in the world.
His next goal is a tour card at the Korea PGA qualifying school in November.
“I love golf,” said Lee, who has difficulty speaking and whose mother helped him communicate throughout the interview.
“I want to win the Masters,” he added.
Lee started showing symptoms in his early childhood in the United States where his father, a South Korean diplomat, was stationed.
“He started avoiding eye contact and replying with what the other person had just said. My heart sank one day when I said, ‘Good night Seungmin’, and he replied ‘Good night Seungmin’, instead of ‘Good night mother’,” she said of the phenomenon known as echolalia.
He tends to show attachments to certain objects - another common symptom - most notably a Patrick the Starfish character doll he was given when the family went to the Universal Studios theme park in Orlando, Florida 10 years ago.
Asked by his mother who he would rescue first from a sinking ship, her or the doll, Lee grimaced and groaned, unable to make up his mind.
At age eight, he was placed in a special education system in the US, where he started playing ice hockey as a sports therapy.
Six years later, he turned to golf, which he had been practising during summer vacations.
Autistic golfers are not completely unprecedented. Moe Norman, who won 55 Canadian Tour and other Canadian events from the 1950s to the 1970s, is believed to have suffered from the disorder. A metronomically reliable hitter of the ball, he has been described as “a supernaturally gifted yet cruelly misunderstood athlete”.
Lee is cognitively impaired, but has a remarkable rote memory and his motor skills appear to be highly developed, according to his golf coach Kim Jong-Pil.
“I think he was born as a golfer,” he said.