PARK CROSSES CARLSBAD OFF LIST
Her 21st LPGA victory is first in 11 tries in North County
The beauty of Aviara Golf Club was not lost on LPGA golfers intent on winning the Kia Classic this weekend. Between holes on the back nine, a golfer from South Korea veered into a vibrant flower bed and snapped off several photographs with her phone camera. Then she jogged to the next hole.
An artistic presence on the tee boxes and fairways was the leisurely and precise golf swing of Inbee Park, a 32-year-old whose golf mastery has made her arguably the best LPGA player of her generation.
Park, who doesn’t feel the need for speed when she’s holding a golf club, earned her 21st LPGA victory Sunday with a 2under 70 to also win in Carlsbad for the first time in 11 tries.
“I have played really, really well on this golf course, but I was never able to win,” said Park, a runner-up in 2010, 2016 and 2019. “Finally being able to win is a relief.”
She led after all four rounds, finishing five strokes ahead of Lexi Thompson and Amy Olson with a 14-under 274. After opening with rounds of 66, 69 and 69, Park held a fivestroke lead going into Sunday. She faltered with consecutive bogeys on the back nine, but sank a 40-foot putt for eagle on 16 to restore her five-stroke margin.
Mel Reid, who fell off Sunday in her attempt to catch up, summed up the challenge of trying to outlast Park on the par-72, 6,609yard course or almost any other track.
“She doesn’t make any mistakes,” said England’s Reid, who finished 26th after Sunday’s 77. “That’s why she has won like a gazillion majors. One of the best players to ever play our game.”
Americans had won the first three events of the LPGA season, and a victory at Aviara would’ve made it four in a row for the first time since 1991.
Park had sat out those three tournaments, though.
She was back in frigid South Korea, where she grew up, until she and her mom moved to Florida so that Inbee, then 12, could work with a Korean golf teacher.
Park said she didn’t touch a golf club for a “good month” during the threemonth hiatus between her final event of the 2020 season and the Kia Classic. She did some weight training. After returning to Las Vegas, where she lives for part of the year, she brushed up her golf for a week.
Evidently, she accumulated almost no rust.
In the first round Thursday, she shot a 66 to assume the lead despite having to play in the afternoon when conditions were wetter, windier and colder than in the morning.
She quickly acclimated to the Poa greens that so vexed Danielle Kang, one of the tour’s best players and putters. Thursday, Kang had three putts on consecutive holes including two misses inside of four feet. After holing out, Kang tossed her ball in the pond.
Park, who averaged 29 putts per round, said she hadn’t been tournamentsharp in practices leading up to Thursday. She suggested that the intensity of an LPGA event lifted her game.
It helps that she has such a trusty swing, one professional players and teachers have lauded. “She probably has the best tempo I’ve seen in stroke,” former PGA golfer Steve Stricker said in 2013.
Park said she has always taken the club back slowly and that it has led to greater control and accuracy —– yet she still has average length off the tee for an LPGA player.
Lydia Ko, a fellow former No. 1-ranked player, is similar in height to the 5-foot-6 Park.
Synched-up footage of the two swinging a driver has shown that when Koh’s driver hits the ball, Park is on the verge of completing her back swing.
“I have watched Inbee’s swing, and I’m so psyched at how smooth it is,” said Haley Moore, an Escondido resident who joined the LPGA tour last year. “She’s comfortable with it, and it works.”
Park, whose putting stroke also thrills technical experts, said that when she was breaking into the LPGA tour, she didn’t “own” her golf swing. She said she developed her own swing with help from her husband, who still provides timely tweaks.
“I know my swing,” she said. “I know how to fix the problems.”
Moore shot a 71 to finish 1 under for the tournament. Her 33rd-place finish was her best in 15 LPGA events.
What next?
Park, ranked fourth in the world, will head to Rancho Mirage and the ANA Inspiration at Mission Hills. That’s where she won in 2013 for her third of seven majors.
“It was a great week this week,” Park said. “It was my first week back out in three months or so, and I played so good. I mean, I couldn’t believe how I was doing out there this week. I thought this week was just kind of a preparation for next week, but I exceeded so much more. I’m just really happy.”
She has closed to within four LPGA career victories of Se-ri Pak, a fellow South Korean who inspired Inbee, then 9, to try to become a professional golfer. Park said the chance to match Pak isn’t a strong source of motivation to continue playing on the tour. She said is driven to represent South Korean in the Olympics, where she won gold in 2016.