Sporting Life: How a golfer left a great tour, forgot about No. 1, and found happiness

December 08, 2022 5:31 PMSanity is more important than greatness. Family more precious than fortune. Happiness more valuable than fame. And yet even though this is self-evident, athletes chase glory sometimes at great cost to themselves. Athletes win Olympic gold and sink into depression. Now what, they ask? Others get eaten by the incessant pressure and are defeated by online abuse. Still they persist with one-dimensional lives where there is nothing beyond practice, travel, wins and losses.  And so if we praise those who eventually arrive at the pinnacle, we must salute those who walk away from it all. Like Shin Ji-yai. At 17, the South Korean won her first event on the Korean golf tour. At 19, she won nine events on that tour. At 20, she won a Major at the British Open. At 22, she was world No. 1 on the elite LPGA Tour. Fast? No, she grins, “super fast”. Actually too fast. Because at 26, she made an uncommon decision. She left the US-based LPGA Tour and returned to the smaller tours in Korea and Japan. Eight years later, at 34, as she sits in a corner of the press room at the Hana Financial Group Singapore Women’s Open, it strikes me that there may not be a world No. 63 in anything as content as her. Every athlete is an original and every path walked is an education. “You know,” she recalls, “I (had) a plan for 10 years about the LPGA, but I finished in three years.” Between 2008 and 2012 she won eight LPGA Tour events, two Majors and became the first Asian to ascend to the top ranking. After that, she explains, “I couldn’t find any motivation to my golf life”. Every dream of Shin’s had come true at 22 and with achievement arrived pressure. Pressure from herself, pressure as No. 1, pressure to be perfect. Soon she became a golfer without a goal. “It was just repetition, repetition. I needed more passion.” Airports, travel and family far away. The stress of injuries. Sometimes the equation becomes unworkable. Anyway, Shin’s predicament was unique, for no Asian had been in her shoes. After her, nine players from Asian nations have been No. 1, but she was the first. No one, she says, had specific advice on what to do, “because no one had got to No. 1”.  Leaving a tour which players scrap to get on to confused people. But athletes are allowed to reset their dreams and reshape their lives. Ash Barty was women’s tennis’ No. 1 when she walked away from the game at 25. “I’ve always done things,” Barty said, “which felt right for me”. So has Shin but it didn’t halt the bewilderment. Did people think you were crazy? “Of course, of course.” “When I moved to Japan, like two, three years, they say, really, you don’t want to come back (to the LPGA Tour)?” No, she didn’t. She admired the LPGA Tour, the opportunities, the money, but the voice in her tired head was sending her East. “If I stay in the LPGA, I think I quit my golf life.” Japan has refreshed her. Japan is a home in Tokyo and dad only two hours away in Korea. Japan is train and car rides to events with just a backpack because a delivery service ships your golf bag and luggage to the next event. Japan is often only three-day events and rice at meals whenever she wants. And so in Japan since 2018 she has won 11 times. Still a hero, just a transplanted one. She calls this “life balance” and underneath all this is a lesson about a single-focus, cut-throat, no-stopping sporting world of no respite. When there’s no other life except hitting a ball, then danger lurks. “I think they burn out,” says Shin. Careers stretch out over decades these days and so plans should make space for “balance”. Ask her what the solution is and she says, “a break”. Focus, every hour, every day, can be exhausting. “We need to step (away) sometimes from the golf.” Go ski, walk, rest. Put the clubs in the garage. Recharge and reinvigorate. Forget about a rival’s form. Forget about money lists, swings and putting woes. Sometimes she asks young players if they’ve ever tried travelling without a golf bag. “They say ‘no’.” It’s why Shin is so important to this tour she’s on, a sort of big sister who’s been out there to the big, hard world, ruled it, tasted it, walked away, made her peace. She finds some players are scared of the challenge of the LPGA Tour, scared about food, language, travelling, but she tells them not to fear, to go, to try. If it doesn’t work, she says, there’s always a home in Asia. A home she came back to, a home which resuscitated her. Then she smiles, gently shakes hands and heads to practice. Big sister and all is very nice, but winning’s still important, isn’t it? “I want it, of course. “Because I’m a player.”