Golf builds bridges. It brings people together. We get that. You might not speak the language, might not eat the still-wiggling food or share cultural interests with our Asian neighbors but we all appreciate a towering tee shot, a butter-cut iron or a solidly struck putt that dies in the center of the hole. “Good shot” translates. Our similarities in the game outweigh our differences.

But there are differences. And questions. Some of which are harder to answer than others.

Which brings us to the mystery of South Korea’s most popular player, Sung Hyun Park, the No. 1 female golfer in the world, a two-time major champion and three-time winner in 2018. Park’s story is intriguing. She is self-taught, oozes talent, has a classic golf swing that harkens back to players such as Tom Weiskopf and last year became the first player since Nancy Lopez in 1978 to win the LPGA’s rookie of the year and player of the year awards (she shared the latter with So Yeon Ryu). With an ounce of charisma, she’d be the face of women’s golf around the world.

“With,” of course, is the operative word. Most Westerners don’t get it. Park makes Ben Hogan look gregarious. The smile, if it ever comes, is small and brief. No matter how loud the roars, no matter how long the ovations, the only acknowledgment she’ll give is a rare touch of the cap. Her mannequin-stoic expression almost never changes whether she’s shooting 62 or 75. Yes, the swing is terrific, a model worth emulating. But if you lined up every LPGA player of Korean descent and asked Western golf fans to list them in order of popularity, Park would need a rally not to finish last.

When she won rookie of the year, she taped her acceptance speech, in Korean, despite being on site for the gala dinner. And while it’s easy to assume that her lack of English contributes to her bashfulness, even around fellow South Koreans she might say four or five words.

So, it stuns most Western golf fans to learn that Park is not only the most popular golfer in South Korea, she’s Elvis, Tom Jones and Justin Bieber rolled into one.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Karen Stupples, who did the commentary for the English-language broadcasts for both the UL International Crown and the LPGA KEB Hana Bank Championship, told me on Sunday. “It borders on hysteria. You have all these women, and the majority of her fans are women, who treat her like the biggest movie star over here. I’m half expecting to see some of them faint.”

Park’s galleries dwarf the rest of the field’s. On Sunday at Hana Bank, she was third from the last out, playing with Sandra Gal and Seon Woo Bae. That group had a hundred times the number of fans as the third-round leaders. And they come dressed for the occasion. Park’s nickname is Namdalla, which translates to “I am different.” Fans have that word stitched on hats, shirts, sweaters, even handbags. But here’s the catch: It’s all Romanized. Even the signs reading “We Love You Sung Hyun Park” are in English, which just adds to the confusion.

I spent two weeks in South Korea asking a broad cross-section of people about Park’s popularity. The biggest question was: Why? Sure, she’s No. 1 in the world but Inbee Park spent 106 weeks as world No. 1, won an Olympic gold medal and is in the LPGA Hall of Fame. She never had that kind of fanatical adoration. So Yeon Ryu reached No. 1 last year and was co-player of the year with Park. Ryu engages fans like nobody in the game. But she doesn’t come close to Park in terms of firing up the base.

If fan clubs are any indication (and South Koreans seem to take them quite seriously) the only player close to Park is In Gee Chun, who won the Hana Bank tournament on Sunday. And while a vast majority of Park’s fans are women, most of Chun’s are men.

So why are rabid fans following Park and not Chun? Why don’t Ryu or Sei Young Kim, another incredible talent, or this year’s rookie phenom, Jin Young Ko, register on the South Korean Richter scale? Of all the greats in women’s golf, why Park?

“I really don’t know the reason why,” Park said on Friday when asked the secret of her enormous popularity. “Perhaps it’s because I’m quite a long hitter, despite the fact that I’m not that tall. Maybe that’s an appealing factor. I’m not sure why, though.”

Some fans said it was because she is an aggressive player, a swashbuckler who takes risks in the style of an Arnold Palmer or Phil Mickelson. “That’s different for a Korean player,” one fan told me.

But the most common answer was also the most uncomfortable one, the one that draws the biggest line of cultural distinction between East and West. I heard it first at the UL International Crown from a former professional basketball player. “Oh, it’s simple,” he said. “She looks like a 10-year-old boy.” As you would expect, that answer set off every alarm bell in my noggin. Surely, I missed something in the translation. But the more people I asked, the more the answer came back the same.

“I believe she is popular because she looks like a young boy,” said Michael Kim, the founder of MK Trends, which licenses the LPGA Golf Wear and NBA brands in Asia and has more than 300 retail stores throughout the region. “That look, especially with women, is very popular.”

Of course, no one should be judged on their looks but doing so is a universal tendency. Ryan Gosling is playing Neil Armstrong at the movies for a reason. And it’s not his test-pilot skills. To hear the South Koreans’ explanation, Park’s look, her fine, boyish facial features, short haircut, and slacks-and-belt style, appeals to the largest swath of followers, especially women.

“This is one of those almost-impossible-to-translate cultural differences,” said Amy Lee, the best translator in the game. Lee comes out only for the LPGA events in South Korea as her real job is to translate international business conferences and high-level summits. “For Westerners, they hear that Sung Hyun’s popularity is based on looking like a young boy and it’s a five-alarm fire. But it’s not creepy. If you look at the K-Pop stars (the Korean boy-band scene) they all have a similar look. I call it the girl-crush factor. Boy or girl, if you have that look, you are popular. In fact, if you went to a private girls’ school in Seoul, and there are some very good ones, the ‘it girls’ would look like Sung Hyun.”

So, Park checks all the boxes: long hitter, great swing, aggressive player, world No. 1 and a look that sends female fans into euphoric fits. We might not get it in the West. We might not agree. But now we know. Mystery solved. Namdalla. It is different, indeed.

Steve Eubanks
Incheon, South Korea

This Steve Eubanks article is reproduced with the permission of the Global Golf Post, the world’s first designed-for-digital weekly golf magazine. Subscribe for free at globalgolfpost.com.

Steve Eubanks is a New York Times bestselling author and award-winning columnist. A former college golfer, he is now happy with his 4-handicap, his senior-golfer status, and the fact that his daughter beats him (and outdrives him) on a regular basis.

Follow Steve Eubanks online at Twitter @jseubanks and at the Global Golf Post.

Cover photo of Sung Hyun Park at the 2018 U.L. International Crown by Ben Harpring