The pressure that young star athletes are subjected to is not always visible to fans. Very few are willing to talk openly about their trauma. Japanese star lady tennis player Naomi Osaka brought a lot of attention to it a couple of years ago by refusing to speak to the media after a match and subsequently pulling out of the French Open due to the criticism that ensued.
After South Korea’s endearing lady pro In Gee Chun won the 2022 KPMG Women’s PGA Championship, a women’s major title, last month, she spoke plainly and openly about her emotional struggles and doubts.
Chun led by six shots after 36 holes and by three after 54 holes, but saw her lead disappear after shooting 40 on the front nine in the final round. At that point, it looked like she might suffer a devastating loss.
“So I want to tell the truth,” she said afterward. “I couldn’t control all the pressure. This is why I had four bogeys (on the front).”
Chun hadn’t won on the LPGA Tour for four years, so feeling pressure, especially from the Korean media, was understandable. Yet it’s rare for a top-level athlete to admit to it publicly. Chun burst on the scene in 2015 as a 20-year-old when she became just the fourth player in history to win the U.S. Women’s Open on her first try. That also made her the first player ever to win majors on three different tours in the same calendar year; she had already won major tournaments on the Korean LPGA and the Japanese LPGA Tour. A year later Chun ran away with the Evian Championship, posting a record low score of 21-under, the lowest score ever in relation to par in a women’s or men’s major tournament. That also made her only the second LPGA player after Se Ri Pak whose first two wins were majors. Naturally the expectations from her back in Korea were enormous.
It was a dizzy ascent for Chun, who had discovered golf at the age of 11 when she accompanied her father to the driving range.
Along the way her coach gave her the nickname Dumbo because she has superpowered hearing. “She’s got elephant ears,” her caddie Dean Herden told ESPN. “If somebody is opening a bottle 20 yards away, she’ll hear it.”
Chun has leaned into the nickname too; her fan club is called The Flying Dumbos, and she has a Dumbo design on her bag.
Since that win at the Evian though, she has won only once more on the LPGA tour – at the 2018 Hana Bank Championship in South Korea. This wasn’t for a lack of effort on her part. In fact, the effort was part of the problem. “I think all athletes work hard, and I did too, but when I tried working hard it gave me more pressure. I felt like I had to make the right result, but I couldn’t make it, so I couldn’t enjoy the process and couldn’t enjoy golf,” Chun said in 2021.
It reached a point where she tuned out her family, friends, and coach. “They tried to help me a lot, but I could not hear what they said, so I hurt them,” she admitted at the time.
Slowly she began to turn her attitude around, trying to enjoy playing golf for its own sake. But the lack of success remained a weight around her neck. In a phone conversation with her sister a week before the PGA, Chun revealed that she was still struggling to see her end goal and was therefore considering leaving the United States. But when her sister suggested she step back from golf to focus on herself, Chun had an epiphany.
“I really cried …. When I heard what she said, I believe I still have a spirit, still want to play golf.”
This was the context in which Chun was playing the final round and even as she faltered, she refused to give up. “I thought ‘In Gee if you never give up, then you can get something. Just don’t crack under pressure. Just keep doing what you’re doing. See the big picture. Keep going to catch your goal.’”
She did just that, helped by a mini-collapse from Lexi Thompson, who has been battling demons of her own. A clutch birdie on the 17 th gave Chun a one-stroke lead and proved to be the margin of victory.
“That’s why I want to keep saying thanks to everyone who believed in me and never gave up on me,” Chun said. “I really appreciate everyone. When I got in a slump, I really wanted to quit golf, but not because of them. I stuck with it. I kept playing. That’s how I won this week. That’s why I’m so thankful … I’m just so happy to make win after all that happened. I just want to keep saying, “I’m so proud of myself.”
She certainly should be.
