Sung Hyun Park is on her own.
Every off season for the last four years, Park has worked alone. She doesn’t have an instructor. She doesn’t belong to a big-name golf club. It’s just Park, grinding through swing changes on the driving range. Her lone companion? Her cell phone.
“It’s difficult every off season to be on my own,” Park admits. “It’s tough to fix things on my own. I shoot my swing and analyze it, every day like that. But it’s never exactly how I want it.”
Park knows the question that’s coming next. If she’s struggling to figure it all out on her own, then why doesn’t she work with an instructor?
She likes the challenge.
“When I come up against a problem, it’s a thrill,” Park admits. “There’s a lot of time to think on your own and while you’re working on different aspects of your swing, it’s a lot of fun.”
Park says she does sometimes think about getting a coach. She worked briefly with Brian Mogg when she moved to Florida in 2017.
“I thought to myself that I need to do this on my own,” Park explained. “Kind of like a family sharing a home. You still need your own space.”
The second ranked player in the world has every reason to have an entourage. She’s certainly earned it. Look at what she did last year. Park made history as the first rookie to reach No. 1 in the world. She topped the money list, took home Rookie and Co-Player of the Year honors. She also won twice, including a major championship.
And yet, nothing has changed. Park spent the past two months preparing for the 2018 LPGA Tour season just as she always has. Alone.
On a cloudless, sunny day, she took a break from her off season routine to meet me at Orange Tree Golf Club in Orlando, Florida. Park is generous with her time, but she arrives dressed to work. She’s heading straight to the range when we wrap up our interview. At the time of our meeting, she had just two weeks left to prepare for her season debut at the Honda LPGA Thailand.
“Hi, how are you?” she says in English, a marked improvement from just one year ago, when she wouldn’t have been able to say as much.
When the Korean moved to Florida, she began learning English. And just like in golf, Park is teaching herself. She’s using a language learning app on her phone. And like the perfection she seeks in her game, she’s frustrated with what she sees as a lack of progress with her English. She planned to pencil in some time with her caddie, David Jones, to practice during the off season. But with Jones based in Ireland, the lessons never panned out.
“It’s really difficult. I’m really frustrated because I feel like I’m not getting anywhere,” Park says. “Getting started is hard and once I start, I lose it all. I’m worried about that.”
Park is certainly not giving herself enough credit. She understands nearly every question I ask in English, but finds comfort relying on translator and LPGA staffer, Kristen Yoon, to interpret our conversation. While waiting to begin the interview, we make casual conversation. She asks me if I live close by and responds to my questions, in English, about why she chose to practice at this particular course in Orlando.
We sat at a small round table behind the clubhouse. Golfers pass us on their way to the course and I’m amazed that Park goes unnoticed. Would the second ranked player on the PGA Tour be able to go undetected? Doubtful.
But Park is happy to stay under the radar. There’s no flash, no frills. Park largely lets her golf do the talking, which has created a Tiger-like mystique around the major champion. It’s led to the misnomer that Park is shy. This morning, the sun is shining, and Park is too. I’ve never seen her laugh or smile so often.
But the smiles hide what Park is feeling inside.
“I put a lot of pressure on myself,” Park admits. “If I perform worse than last year, who else is there to blame?”
On the flip side, there’s no one but Park to credit for last year’s success. But it’s made the hours working alone on the range more daunting as she fights to keep the doubts at bay. Her mother, Keum Ja Lee, who is staying with her in Orlando, notices too.
“My mom even said to me that it’s hard, and I think it’s especially difficult this year. Every year I want to be better than the last, so I think that’s why I have a little more pressure this year.”
Park likes to tinker, to experiment until she discovers something what works. This off season, she’s focused on improving her rotation. Don’t worry, Park hasn’t made any drastic changes to her impeccable swing.
Rather, she’s spent hours on the range searching for an elusive feeling. It’s one she says she hasn’t felt with her swing since 2015. That year, Park was playing on the KLPGA. She won three times that season and says her shot making was the best it has ever been. The next year, Park won seven times. She followed that with a record-breaking rookie season on the LPGA Tour.
“I liked my swing, but to me it wasn’t perfect,” Park says about her performance last year.
In hopes of replicating the swing feel she had in 2015, she spends time analyzing what she believes she did right or wrong during the week of a tournament. Then, she tries to remember what exactly it felt like and make swing adjustments accordingly.
“I think about why I felt the way that I did and try to eliminate things little by little. It’s more difficult this way because it’s not always this or that.”
This week in Thailand, Park begins her second season on Tour. While most second-year members will be chasing their first win, Park will be chasing history. She has the next 10 months to try and exceed what she accomplished in 2017. If only by the smallest of margins.
“Even though last year was great, I would like to improve,” Park says. “Even if it’s a fingernail better than last year.”
Our time is up. When she arrived she greeted with me with a smile, but she leaves me with a parting hug. It’s time for Park to get to the range and back to work. On her own.
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