By: Max Bechtoldt
To the surprise of likely very few people, the other country besides the United States who got three players into the Olympic field was South Korea. This is the third time in a row that Korea has had more than two representatives, but this year, it wasn’t so easy. It took Amy Yang winning the final event in the qualifying period to get a third player on the team, and what a strong team it is, with three players participating for the second time. Here are the Olympic representatives from South Korea:
AMY YANG
Speaking of Yang, she is now the most recent major champion on the LPGA Tour, and it was a long time coming. Yang has been on Tour for over 15 years now and had established herself previously as one of the best players in the world without a major yet. That all changed with her dominant performance at last week’s KPMG Women’s PGA Championship. Yang, now ranked No. 5 in the world, also won the CME Group Tour Championship just last season, making this the most successful, and lucrative, stretch of her long career. The six-time winner on tour clinched a new accomplishment, making a return to the Olympics, where she finished one shot off the medal stand in 2016. I would not bet against her to keep this incredible stretch going.
JIN YOUNG KO
Jin Young Ko returns for her second Olympic games, after finishing T9 in Tokyo back in 2021. All Ko has done since that time is continue her likely hall-of-fame level career in strong fashion. Despite dealing heavily with injuries, Ko has won seven times since last appearing in the Olympics. Only Nelly Korda (8) has more in that stretch. While Ko has been quiet in 2024, she is trending in the right direction. Ko was runner-up at the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship, and finished 12th the week before. On the season she has missed only one cut and had three top-10 finishes. While she is still looking for her first win in over a year, the two-time major champion and 15-time LPGA Tour winner is starting to look like herself again.
HYO JOO KIM
I’ve previously written about how Hyo Joo Kim is the most underrated player on the LPGA Tour, and I think the reality that most people would be surprised to learn this will be her second Olympic appearance proves that. While Kim has probably underachieved a bit in the win column, with six on her career including a major at Evian in her first career title, she is the absolute face of consistency. Without anything resembling a weakness in her game, Kim has missed just six total cuts since the beginning of 2019. In that same stretch she has 35 top-10 finishes and three wins. No, Kim is not the flashiest player, she generally plays mistake-free golf with a killer short game.
