A Body Out of Balance
Jae-hak stared at the text and let out a long, heavy breath.
"Haa..."
Jeong Jae-hak. A fourth-year professional golfer. Back when he'd first come up, he'd been a rookie people actually expected things from. Through his first year he'd even placed in several major tournaments, and looking at it then, it had seemed like nothing but a winning streak lay ahead of him.
Then, somewhere along the way, his balance had started to collapse. When the woods were working, the putter fell apart. When the putting came together, the irons went to pieces. Tournament after tournament, his rhythm kept tying itself in knots.
The worst of it, though, was that Jae-hak himself could not find a set of clubs that fit his body. In a rare twist, he had grown another four centimeters at twenty-one — his second year as a pro — and from that point on, no club he picked up sat right in his hands.
It wasn't for lack of trying. He had run through the catalogs of just about every brand that mattered. The money he'd sunk into clubs alone already ran well into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. If his family hadn't been well-off, the cost of the equipment would have forced him into retirement years ago.
This is driving me insane.
He couldn't even say how many full sets of clubs were sitting around the house at this point. At home they kept telling him to quit golf, come into the company, and take over the family business. He still couldn't let the game go.
"I've been chasing this one thing since I was a kid. You think I can just walk away?"
For a professional, losing sponsors to this degree wasn't simply a money problem. It meant he had no draw left as an athlete.
I need to clear my head...
Turning it over any further was only going to make the headache worse. He figured he'd cool off with a round of the game for a while, and reached over to switch on the computer.
The moment it came up, a handful of messages dropped into the messenger client that had been sitting logged in.
What's this... Lee Jin-seong posting something like that?
The nickname alone was enough. The game was old, and the only people still playing it were the ones who'd been there for years — one degree of separation and you knew everybody.
The player behind CookingGenius was, without a doubt, Lee Jin-seong: owner-chef of Cheonghak, a man Jae-hak knew perfectly well. Everyone granted that his cooking sat at the highest level in the country. In-game, though, he could be insufferably prickly. In the group chat he almost never talked about his personal life — item trades, and that was about it.
"Huh..."
A little curiosity started to stir. Golf clubs were obviously not the kind of thing you had knocked together in some neighborhood workshop, but praise that glowing was hard to ignore.
He logged into the game, and Lee Jin-seong was already online. Jae-hak sent a careful whisper.
Jin-seong was the prickly type on a good day, and the last time they'd run into each other in-game he'd been especially sharp, so Jae-hak was more than a little tense.
The reply, against every expectation, was perfectly civil.
On any ordinary day Jin-seong was not a fast reply. This, however, was a question about the All-Around Workshop. There was not a single reason to type slowly.
......Was this guy always this talkative?
He hadn't been the chatty type even in-game, and he'd been quiet the times Jae-hak had eaten at the restaurant. This was genuinely unexpected.
Well. Now I'm definitely curious...
Custom-made to fit the user...?
Golf clubs weren't a stranger to that idea. Jae-hak had already paid serious money more than once to have sets built for him. Every last one of them had been a dud — expensive, and worse in the hands than the off-the-shelf clubs he'd been using before.
Still...
When a man who never talked like this went this far, it was hard not to wonder.
"Ugh... it's freezing."
I'd finished finals not long ago, and the semester was over. Time had opened up more than I'd expected, so I'd decided to spend whatever free hours I had over the break at the All-Around Workshop. The one problem was that the heating in here barely worked.
"Maybe I should just buy an air conditioner."
I was going to need to pick up a unit with a heating function before it got any colder. I was rubbing my hands together, trying to work some warmth back into them, when the door creaked open and someone stepped inside.
"Excuse me — is this the All-Around Workshop?"
A man in his mid-twenties, solidly built.
An athlete, maybe?
I stood up from my seat and greeted him.
"Ah, yes. That's right. Come in."
He came over and sat down.
"I was referred by Chef Lee Jin-seong."
"Ah — then you're a chef as well?"
The man shook his head, drew out a business card, and held it across to me.
"Ah, I'm not a chef. I'm a professional golfer. Have you perhaps heard of me?"
Well...
Honestly, if you said golfers to me, I couldn't name anyone past Pak Se-ri and Tiger Woods. I put on a smile so the moment wouldn't get too awkward.
"Ahaha... I'm sorry. I don't really watch golf."
"Ah. I see..."
A flicker of disappointment crossed his face.
Hmm...
Watching him deflate at the news that I didn't follow golf, I had a pretty good idea what he'd come to commission.
"Did you come to have golf clubs made, by any chance?"
He flinched, then nodded.
"Yes, that's right... The truth is, I..."
Pro Jeong laid out everything he'd been through. I listened all the way through, then nodded.
"I see. So even after going through that many sets of clubs, you kept getting the feeling that none of them sat right."
"Yes. It felt like I was constantly wearing clothes that didn't fit my body. And thanks to that, my results have been on a long slide downhill."
He let out a heavy breath.
"Maybe it's all just excuses. Maybe my game simply fell off, and I've been trying to pin it on the tools instead of my own ability."
Could be.
It was entirely possible that skill was the whole problem, the way he'd just said. In that case, it wouldn't matter how fine a set of clubs I built him — they wouldn't change a thing.
I want to see him swing first, though.
I mixed him a cup of instant coffee, handed it over, and said,
"You may have heard this already, but I always get a read on the person who'll be using the piece before I start making it. This time the commission is golf clubs, so I'd like to see you play. Would that be possible?"
"Watch me play golf..."
He hesitated. His confidence was already shot, and the last thing he wanted was to show anyone his swing in this condition.
Still...
He couldn't just sit here like this. If this was the last throw, he wanted to thrash at it somehow. Jae-hak stood up from his chair.
"Understood. Then let's go to the nearest indoor golf simulator."
I shook my head, firm.
"No. I need to see you play on an actual course. I have to watch how the user handles the thing in the field."
"......"
Video footage would have been convenient, but Jae-hak's recent results had been so poor he hadn't even been properly captured on camera.
No way around it, then.
"Understood. Let's go. It'll take a little time, though — is that all right?"
"Yes. That's fine. Let's go."
We drove about an hour in his car and arrived at a golf course on the outskirts of Gyeonggi Province.
Nice car...
From what I'd heard, he wasn't that famous a player, but the thing he was driving was a foreign luxury car worth well over a hundred thousand dollars. He could have been one of those guys who blows everything on a car — except the interior didn't give off that feeling at all.
Must come from money.
We got out. He pulled the golf bag from the trunk and headed into the course. I walked alongside him at an easy pace and asked,
"Is that the best of the sets you've got?"
"Yes... This one fits my body the best, but if the others are ten percent, this is maybe fifteen. That's about the difference."
"I see."
It was a weekday, and cold besides, so luckily the place was almost empty. Jeong set a ball down, then drew the thickest club from his bag.
That's the driver, I guess?
I didn't know golf well, but I knew clubs broke down into three broad types. The head on that one was the thickest, so it had to be the driver. He settled into his stance and brought the club around.
Crack!
Hmm...
The ball came off the face and flew a good distance. Jeong's expression, though, was not a happy one. We walked slowly out toward where it had gone, and found it sitting in the sand.
I didn't know the rules properly, but a result like that usually meant the aim had been off. He fished the ball out with a wry smile, took a thinner iron from the bag, and swung again.
Thwack!
This time I could see it clearly. He'd caught it off-center.
"Haa... I'm sorry. For some reason it's even worse today."
He dipped his head in apology. Two misses in a row, as a professional — he looked mortified on his own account.
For me, though, those two swings in a row were exactly what I needed. I had a read now on what was wrong, and on the direction the clubs would have to take.
"Don't be. If anything, watching those swings just now, I got a sense of where the problem is — and how I ought to make the clubs."
The look on Jae-hak's face, which had been dark with disappointment in himself, brightened all at once.
"Th-that's really true?"
"Yes. I think I know what the problem was."