Musician Billy Joel may have put it best: “You will come to a place where the only thing you feel are loaded guns in your face and you’ll have to deal with pressure.”
That’s an apt description of what South Koreans Sungjae Im and Si Woo Kim will face this week competing for a medal in the men’s Olympic golf competition at Kasumigaseki Country Club’s East Course in Saitama, Japan.
Every competitor in the field dreams of gold, silver or bronze, but the South Korean pair have more at stake: a medal would exempt them from mandatory military service.
While relations have simmered in recent years, North and South Korea, two countries split at the 38th parallel and separated by a border barrier known as the demilitarized zone (DMZ), are still technically at war. As a result, all “able-bodied men” between the ages of 18 and 28 are required to serve at least 21 months in the military as a deterrent to North Korean aggression. That compulsory service can be delayed, but there are only a few “Get out of service cards” that exist. One of the exemptions is winning a gold medal at the Asian Games, something that PGA Tour pros K.H. Lee and Sung Kang before him both accomplished. Sang-Moon Bae, a two-time Tour winner who lost a legal battle to defer his military service in 2015, and Seung Yul Noh, who won once, weren’t as fortunate and both honored their two-year commitments only to return to the pro ranks as shadows of their former selves.
The pressure this week for Kim and Im seemingly is enormous, unless, of course, you ask them about it. Both downplayed the significance.
“I don’t really, like, focus or think about the service in the military,” Kim said in a pre-tournament press conference on Wednesday. “My only goal is to win the championship and get medal and be honored.”
Im echoed that sentiment: “I only focus and think about the winning games, not the military problem.”
We all know the old saying, actions speak louder than words. Well, there were only two players in this week’s 60-man field who skipped the British Open to prepare for the Olympics – Kim and Im.
“I wanted to get used to the time difference between Japan and United States, so I went, I flew to Korea because the time difference, the time is the same here, so I made myself so comfortable and relaxed and prepared for the Olympic games,” Im explained.
He also expressed why this week matters to him.
“It was my dream since I was a little kid, being an Olympian, and I can’t believe this happened to me,” Im said.
The 23-year-old South Korean is an ascending talent, who proved his mettle with an impressive victory at the 2020 Honda Classic. He finished tied for second at the 2020 Masters in November, but hasn’t recorded a top-3 finish since. He is young enough that he could still have a second bite at the apple four years from now in Paris if he doesn’t medal this time. By 2024, Im, ranked No. 27 in the world, could be a major winner. He’s that good. But so far, there’s no indication that a major will be treated the same as an Olympic medal.
A Players Championship title, which Kim won in 2017, didn’t do the trick for him.
“I really wish we could have that benefit,” Kim told reporters at the time. “However, regardless of me winning this tournament I really have to go to the military service, and I’ve already decided I’m going to go so I’m ready for that.”
Kim, 26, likely wouldn’t have made Korea’s Olympic team had the Tokyo games not been postponed for a year due to the global pandemic. He won the PGA Tour’s American Express in late January to vault into the top 50 in the world, but has been mired in a slump with just one top 10 in his last 12 starts. Winner of three Tour titles, Kim became the youngest winner of the Players Championship, a victory that made him “like a God in Korea,” according to Im – just not exempt for military service.
K.J. Choi, an eight-time PGA Tour winner who didn’t turn pro until 1994 after fulfilling his military obligation, is in Japan as Team Korea’s coach. His advice to his understudies?
“When you make your iron shots, just look straight to the pin and you have to make your ball stop 3 feet from the pin,” Im recounted.
If he and Kim can do that, a medal of any color should be theirs for the taking.
No pressure.