koreans and golf

It's a stereotype that Korean people love golf, but my parents never played when I was growing up. In the early nineties, my father went on a golfing tournament with his alumni association, and he came in last place and was given a bowling ball as a prize. He brought home a trophy that said, "Most Honest Golfer," and we left it the anteroom where we put on our shoes.

My dad said, "Golf is boring." He bought himself a leftie set of clubs for when my grandfather came to visit, around the same time as the alumni tournament. This was when I was in high school, living in the basement and being morose. My father used the clubs maybe once, and from then on they lived propped in the corner of the stairwell, facing the laundry room.

My grandfather was a smoker, a talker, and a golfer. There are thousands of photographs of him holding clubs, in the final moments of a full swing, a club parallel to the green behind his back. He won a big tournament in 1980, and I was photographed sitting inside the silver trophy, an alien in a giant soft boiled egg cup.

It's most likely that when my father said golf was boring, he really meant it was boring for someone like him who had no time to practice. In the past few years, now that my has started to be more comfortable, and less stressed, he's started to pick up the game. Now he goes twice a week to practice, during the week.

"He's excellent," says my grandmother. She's a golfer too, and she's visiting from Seoul for the first time since my grandfather died this February. My grandmother's hair is white because she stopped dying it, but her attitude is the same. She said, "I plan on living for at least another twenty years."

Now she calls my father "distinguished," even though thirty-five years ago, she and my grandfather were against the marriage, because he was broke. Last week, they both ate lobsters together, flanking my mom. All water under the bridge.