Peter Williams: Korean wave changing landscape

There's a seismic rumbling ready to upset the balance of power of world golf.

It hasn't fully exploded yet, but there have been some major rumblings in the last two months, with aftershocks even reaching New Zealand.

The game is changing before our eyes and at the current rate of progress, the landscape promises to be significantly different 10 years from now, if not sooner.

Consider this. Since July 12, Ji Eun-Hi has won the US Women's Open, Jennifer Song's taken out the US Women's Amateur and prestigious Public Links Championship, Yang Yong-Eun beat Tiger Woods to claim the PGA Championship and, just six days ago, An Byeong-Hun became the youngest ever winner of the US Amateur.

In what is now a truly international game, that's an astounding sequence of success for golfers born in Korea. Just for good measure in this country, Jane Lee led Kristin School to the national secondary schools championship last Monday.

It's a sequence of success that's been bubbling for some time. The number of serious players from Korea, thousands of whom constitute a diaspora in countries with many more golf courses and opportunities than their homeland, meant a litany of achievement like that of recent times was going to happen.

But there's more to it than just player quantity. It's the extraordinary amount of time on driving ranges and practice areas that have led to this quite remarkable wave of success. As a cynical observer of the LPGA Tour once wryly noted of Korean players' habits "any hour not spent practising is an hour wasted".

Mike Bender, a PGA teaching professional in Florida with more than 50 top Korean amateurs and professionals on his books, told Sports Illustrated this week players from that country "train with a very, very high degree of focus from a young age. The Koreans have an amazing stamina for practising. The kids just obey their parents who are always with them so there's no chance to goof around."

Spend a bit of time around most golf courses and driving ranges in Auckland and you'll find the same thing. Teenagers hitting balls till their hands hurt, a 10-year-old putting on the practice green in the wind and rain of a dark winter's evening with father in the car, shining the headlights, or a mother lugging a carry bag on her back while her much younger and fitter child walks the fairway with earplugs in, entranced with the prospects for the next shot.

Koreans have fled the expensive overcrowded golf courses of their homeland for nations where the game is accessible and the facilities spacious. The well-off head straight for the US, those of more modest means are in Australia and New Zealand.

But, as they chase the golfing nirvana of western nations and continue to dominate the prize list of major championships, what will be the impact on corporate America and the affluent TV audience it chases through tournament sponsorship?

Does the state of the LPGA Tour offer a glimpse of golf's future? That tour, now with 46 Korean players, is but a shadow of its former self as the lack of appeal to sponsors means seven tournaments are missing from this year's schedule.

There was no LPGA Tour event on American soil from the US Open on July 12 till last weekend's tour stop in Oregon. The height of summer passed with only a tournament in France and the Women's British Open on the other side of the Atlantic.

Koreans must be admired for their intensity, their desire and their willingness to invest time and calluses to win golf tournaments. But, as the trend of the women's game inevitably transcends men's golf, how will the game's power brokers in the boardrooms of America and Europe react? Is Korea, followed inevitably by China poised to become to golf what India is for cricket? Watch this space.