Korea Is Small
“Nice shot!”
Lee Gyeong-eun clapped her hands and shouted at the top of her lungs.
Kim Seong-ho watched the ball sail far into the distance for a moment, then handed his seven-iron back to the caddie. With an expression that said it was nothing special, he walked over to Gyeong-eun, who was still clapping.
She turned to him, wide-eyed with surprise.
“Seong-ho, when on earth did you learn to play golf?”
“You already know the answer to that, don’t you? When have I ever learned golf?”
Seong-ho glanced at Gyeong-eun’s friends, who were staring at him in open astonishment, and smiled.
“I’ve just swung a club a few times. People say it’s hard, but once you try it, it’s really nothing.”
Gyeong-eun’s friends, who had never seen Seong-ho touch a golf club before and had already lost every hole through the tenth, could only listen with flushed faces.
Gyeong-eun slipped her arm through his and asked,
“Then why aren’t you using a driver? Tee shots are better with a driver.”
“I’ve been winning straight through the tenth. If I keep this up, your friends won’t have any fun. I thought a little handicap might be in order.”
“Ah, that makes sense. Thank you, Seong-ho.”
She turned to her friends and called out,
“Don’t worry, girls. Seong-ho says he’s going easy on you, so just relax and play.”
They gave her awkward smiles and turned away to whisper among themselves.
“What the hell? He said he couldn’t play. That is ‘can’t play’? He’s a complete pro.”
“It’s not just that he’s good. This place has barely been open six months. Look at how he reads the course.”
“They only invited a handful of VIPs for rounds after the opening. There’s no way he should already know how to attack these holes…”
“No way? He’s reading them perfectly.”
By then Seong-ho was already standing at Gyeong-eun’s side, explaining the eleventh hole’s strengths and weaknesses.
“The eleventh takes a lot of wind, so sending it just a little to the right actually helps the ball fly straighter.”
Gyeong-eun’s friends stared at him in disbelief, then shook their heads hard as if to clear them.
“Whatever. The plan to humiliate him already failed. Let’s at least win the remaining holes and salvage some pride. We can’t lose all of them after dropping ten straight.”
“I don’t think we’re salvaging any pride either…”
One of them held up the scorecard with the strokes for each hole written on it.
“Gyeong-eun’s husband is even through ten. We haven’t made a single par. Everything’s double bogeys and triple bogeys. How do we save face on the rest? He just hit a seven-iron over a hundred and fifty meters. That’s driver distance for us on a good day—and we can’t even count on finding the fairway.”
Even saying it out loud made her cringe. She shook her head, finally located her tee shot in the rough, and after a fat chunk that barely rolled the ball onto the fairway, muttered,
“We should be grateful he refused the bet. If he’d taken it… we might have had to walk home.”
Every one of Gyeong-eun’s friends turned bright red.
They had swaggered about giving him a handicap and pushed him into a “friendly” side bet of a million won a stroke. At the time Gyeong-eun had refused on his behalf, insisting it was his first time on a real course. They had only pressed harder, offering an even bigger handicap and grumbling that golf without money on the line was no fun at all. Looking back now, they wiped cold sweat at the thought of what would have happened if he had accepted.
Clink.
The ball dropped into the cup, and Gyeong-eun clapped with pure delight.
“Wow—another par finish? Anyone watching would think you’re a pro. Are you sure this is your first time on a course?”
“If I’d known golf was this easy, I would have aimed for the tour from the start.”
Seong-ho cast a sidelong glance at Gyeong-eun’s friends, still huddled over a double-bogey line that looked hopeless, and spoke just loud enough for them to hear.
“Gyeong-eun. Do you know what I thought the first time I stepped onto a course and actually played?”
“What did you think?”
“That no matter how many people gather to worry and talk, what matters is the person who actually does it. Golf teaches that pretty well. In the end, the one who swings has to be good for a good shot to come out.”
“That’s true. People say golf is a battle with yourself.”
Gyeong-eun looked back at her friends still debating the putt with grave seriousness.
“Double bogey or triple bogey—it doesn’t matter. The group behind us is waiting for us to finish. We need to hurry. This is just being inconsiderate.”
Then she linked arms with Seong-ho again, her face bright with excitement.
“Seong-ho, let’s go on ahead to the next hole. What do you think of it?”
“The twelfth has a mountain on the left side, so…”
The two of them left her friends behind and moved on to the next hole.
Standing on the green, still pretending to read each other’s lines, Gyeong-eun’s friends could only stare glumly at balls that had stopped nowhere near the cup.
People gathered at the shade house, each recounting something that had happened during their rounds as they rested. At the table where Lee Gyeong-eun sat, however, she was the only one talking about golf.
“If he’d just played a little better, he would have finished under. It’s such a shame.”
Looking over the card with Seong-ho’s final score, she kept lamenting the missed under-par round to her friends.
“Have any of you ever seen an amateur—no, a person on a course for the first time—shoot under? Ugh, so close. We almost got to watch something incredible.”
Still glowing with excitement, she turned to Seong-ho.
“We should start taking proper lessons right now and enter tournaments. Ah… that won’t work, will it…”
She glanced sidelong at her friends, a small smile curling at her lips.
“Father has such high expectations of Seong-ho that he doesn’t have the time. Honestly, I wonder if Korean golf just lost a real talent.”
Watching her friends’ faces crumple by the second while she kept talking like that, Seong-ho realized Gyeong-eun was enjoying this even more than he was.
She never said anything, but it must have really gotten under her skin.
Looking at her continuing to talk at her friends with such high spirits, he understood that she had never let go of what had happened at that gathering before their wedding. So he did not tell her to stop. He simply watched her triumphant expression with a quiet smile of his own.
That was when a young man approached their table.
“I heard the princesses were making an appearance, and here you all are.”
Director Choi Byeong-mu, the son of Homyeong Construction, walked up to where Gyeong-eun and the others were sitting.
Gyeong-eun, who had been chattering happily, went stiff the moment he appeared. In contrast, the frozen expressions on her friends’ faces melted into bright, welcoming smiles as they greeted him.
“We were just about to call you. Are you free?”
“Even if I weren’t, how could I stay away when the princesses have arrived?”
He said it as if it were the most natural thing in the world, then looked Gyeong-eun over with oily eyes. His voice, when he greeted her, was even oilier than his gaze.
“Been well?”
“Yeah.”
She answered shortly and turned her head away, making it blatantly clear she had no interest in locking eyes with him. Choi Byeong-mu paid no attention to her attitude and kept talking to her anyway.
Seeing how uncomfortable she was, Seong-ho rose and greeted him.
“Hello. We met at the wedding, didn’t we? I’m Kim Seong-ho.”
He stood and offered his hand. Choi Byeong-mu treated him like thin air and spoke to Gyeong-eun’s friends instead.
“When you come to our club, you should call me first.”
“We thought you’d be busy. People say you’ve been swamped since joining your father’s company.”
“Busy or not, that still stings. If the club manager hadn’t told me, I never would have known. So? How’d you play today? Our course is a bit tough—breaking a hundred already puts you in the pretty-good category.”
He picked up the scorecard lying in front of them, scanned it, and his eyes went wide.
“Someone shot a seventy-four on our course? That’s got to be a club record. Even for this year’s pro tournament they were talking about softening the layout because so many over-par scores were expected… Who’s the one with pro-level game?”
He checked the name written on the card.
“Kim Seong-ho? Kim Seong-ho is…”
As he looked up in shock, Seong-ho offered his hand again.
“Allow me to reintroduce myself. We met at the wedding. I’m Kim Seong-ho.”
Choi Byeong-mu hastily wiped the surprise from his face and took the offered hand.
“If you were a pro, I would have heard of you… Are you training for the tour or something? From what I was told, that didn’t sound like you at all…”
“A pro? Not at all. Today is my first time on a real course.”
“Your first time? That’s ridiculous—”
Apparently convinced Seong-ho was mocking him, Choi Byeong-mu looked to Gyeong-eun’s friends for confirmation. They only nodded, confirming that Seong-ho was telling the truth.
He stared at Seong-ho again in disbelief.
“You’re… really saying this is your first time? That a man who stepped onto a course for the first time today shot a seventy-four on our layout?”
“Hahaha. I got lucky.”
Seong-ho laughed lightly and sat back down. Gyeong-eun patted his shoulder.
“There’s a saying that luck is a skill too. You don’t shoot seventy-four on luck alone. He was probably just born with it.”
Choi Byeong-mu seemed to find her praise hard to swallow; his next words dripped with sarcasm.
“North Seoul CC may be our company’s course, but golf should stay a hobby. Getting too deep into it isn’t good. A man ought to be recognized for doing his work well and proving his ability. You want recognition for a little pastime like this?”
Seong-ho’s mouth curved upward as he agreed.
“I completely agree with you. A pastime like this isn’t of any real use.”
Choi Byeong-mu’s brow furrowed at the ready agreement; he turned his head toward Seong-ho. Still smiling, Seong-ho added one more line.
“That’s why I think golf courses should sit low on a company’s asset rankings as well. If Homyeong Construction ever runs into trouble, please come to me with North Seoul CC as a sale. I’ll give you a good price for it.”
“What kind of thing is that to say?”
Choi Byeong-mu snapped, bristling.
Seong-ho raised both hands in a placating gesture.
“Ah, please don’t misunderstand. I meant it in the best possible spirit. I was only agreeing with Director Choi’s opinion that golf is nothing more than a pastime.”
When Seong-ho even bowed his head in apology, Choi Byeong-mu could not keep ranting. He scowled, waved a dismissive hand, and spoke to Gyeong-eun’s friends instead.
“I have important company business, so I’ll head out first. If you need anything, just use my name—I’ll let the club know. And…”
He glared at Seong-ho.
“Let’s not see each other again.”
“Haha. Korea is such a small country—I’m not sure that’s possible. Still, if we do meet next time, I hope we can talk with smiles on our faces. Not the way we did today.”
Seong-ho answered with an easy smile. And as he pictured the next time he would face Choi Byeong-mu—at the pre-bid briefing for Daeguk Fertilizer—the smile on his face only deepened.