Men’s golf confirmed Asia’s strongest position by sweeping individual and team gold medals at the 2006 Doha and 2010 Guangzhou Asian Games, but was disappointed with ‘no gold’ at the 2014 Incheon and 2018 Jakarta and Palembang competitions. I swallowed.
However, at the Hangzhou Asian Games, they are preparing for their first gold medal in 9 years. This is because professional players can now participate due to rule changes.
In this tournament, the men’s golf team includes Kim Si-woo (28, CJ Korea Express) and Lim Seong-jae (25, CJ Korea Express), who are playing on the PGA Tour, as well as amateurs Jo Woo-young (22) and Jang Yu-bin (21).
Among these, this competition is especially important for Kim Si-woo, the ‘eldest brother’ of the national team. This is because the resolution of military service is at stake.
For male golf players, military service is a major obstacle in their careers. This is because a gap of more than a year from actual play is quite a blow as he is well into his prime.
Unlike other sports, golf, which is an individual sport, does not provide an opportunity to gain practical experience during military service. This is why joining the military becomes even more burdensome.
There are similar cases before. Senior golfer Bae Sang-moon (37) was on a roll with two wins on the PGA Tour, but his momentum came to a halt when he enlisted in 2015. He returned to the PGA after being discharged from the military after receiving a deferred tour seeding, but has not been able to show his former flair since then.
Kim Si-woo, who performed somewhat poorly last year, has been preparing with great determination for the Asian Games, which were postponed a year. He devoted himself to off-season training to regain his sense of short game, and his wife Oh Ji-hyeon (27), a professional golfer who tied the knot at the end of last year, took a break from her career as a player and headed to the United States to focus on supporting Kim Si-woo.
This resulted in a different result. Kim Si-woo achieved his fourth career win at the Sony Open on the PGA Tour in January of this year, and although he has not won any additional wins since then, he has performed consistently, including runner-up at AT&T Byron Nelson and fourth place at the Memorial Tournament.메이저사이트
He survived the playoff series, where only top ranked players can participate, and finished tied for 20th place. He is worth looking forward to at the Asian Games as well.
If Kim Si-woo fails to win a gold medal in this competition, his career will be in trouble. We need to aim for a medal at the Paris Olympics next year, but the competition is much higher.
Moreover, only the top two ranked countries in the world can participate in the Olympics. Kim Si-woo, who is currently ranked 39th in the world, third after Kim Joo-hyung (18th) and Lim Seong-jae (27th), cannot be guaranteed to secure a ticket to the Olympics right away.
There are no team events at the Olympics, so the path to winning a medal is even more difficult. For Kim Si-woo, winning the gold medal in this competition is the ‘best scenario.’
In the Asian Games golf event, each individual plays 4 rounds and 72 holes, and then the team performance is determined by the combined score for each country. If you get good results in the individual competition, your performance in the team competition will naturally also improve.
Kim Si-woo and his teammates on the national team are reassuring. Seongjae Lim is a ‘world class’ player who has already established himself as a top player on the PGA Tour, while Wooyoung Jo and Yubin Jang each won one win as amateurs on the Korea Professional Golf (KPGA) Korean Tour, showing off their skills as good as professionals.
Therefore, the men’s golfers participating in this tournament are expected to have a higher chance of winning a gold medal than ever before. The Korea Sports Council is also expecting men’s golf as a likely gold medal-winning event ahead of this tournament.