Haenam: Kim Sei-young ended her five-year LPGA title drought by winning the BMW Ladies Championship on Sunday by four strokes, but the final margin of victory doesn’t begin to tell the whole story of how Kim’s final round went. The South Korean veteran entered the final round at Pine Beach Golf Links in Haenam, South Jeolla Province, with a four-shot lead over two players at 19-under. But one of those two, Korean American Yealimi Noh, made an early push while playing in the final group with Kim.
According to Yonhap News Agency, after Kim’s opening bogey and Noh’s birdies on the first and the fourth holes, Kim’s lead was suddenly cut down to just one. Having had some near-misses during a long winless stretch, Kim admittedly felt the pressure. But the 32-year-old buckled down and fended off Noh, along with the rest of the field, to shoot a five-under 67 on Sunday and finish at 24-under 268.
“I was really nervous from the morning, and I stayed that way on every hole,” Kim said, with the champion’s trophy by her side at the post-tournament presser. “I couldn’t really believe I had a chance to win this tournament. And when Yealimi got to within one, I felt a bit intimidated because she is an aggressive player. But I decided to match her aggressiveness, and I was able to stick to that plan the rest of the way.”
Kim was playing only about a 30-minute drive away from her hometown of Yeongam. She played the entire week in front of her parents and several members of her extended family, and she said she took a particular piece of advice from her father to heart. “He told me never to play scared,” Kim said. “I tried to keep reminding myself of that throughout the round.”
Kim said one negative thought after another kept popping up in her head when her lead shrunk. She even thought about how embarrassing it would be if she blew her lead in front of her family. “At that point, it was really a battle against myself,” she said. “I tried not to let pessimistic thoughts consume me.”
Kim said she had tried many different approaches to try to snap a winless drought that stretched from weeks to months and then to years. It was only last week in Shanghai that she had decided to keep it simple and go with the flow. “I just stuck to my natural style of play and kept pushing through whenever I ran into tense situations,” she said. “And that has always been the way I played, and I just couldn’t capitalize on that over the past few years. This victory made me realize that once again, and that is why this will mean so much to my career, beyond just the outcome itself.”
Kim conceded that she worried when or if her drought would end. “I got to a point where I told myself that I would win at some point, whether it be five years or 10 years down the road,” she said. “It’s so hard to get back on track once you’ve lost your way. Now that I’ve finally won after such a long time, I want to keep winning.”
Kim put on her trademark red pants for the final round. She recalled how she wanted something that fans could remember her by, much like Tiger Woods’ red shirts on Sundays, earlier in her career. When she won her first tournament wearing a red pair of pants, it was a done deal. “I was going to stop wearing red if I didn’t win today,” Kim said with a laugh. “Now I will keep wearing red pants.”