The Korea Ladies Professional Golf (KLPGA) Tour season has been defined by the rivalry between Seo Kyo-rim and Kim Min-sol, both born in 2006. Fans have dubbed the matchup the “Sol-rim showdown,” but after Seo edged Kim in a playoff at the 48th KLPGA Championship presented by BC Card and the Korea Economic Daily last week to become the first player to reach four wins this season, she offered a confident revision. “Since I got to four wins first, I think it can be called the ‘Rim-sol showdown’ now,” she said.
Through last year, the spotlight belonged to Kim. She burst onto the scene with two victories but fell short of the required number of starts for Rookie of the Year, and the award went to Seo instead. That left Seo with an unwelcome label: a rookie champion without a title.
This year is a different story. Seo leads the tour with four wins and has overtaken Kim to hold sole first place in Player of the Year points, prize money and scoring average. In just one year, she has transformed into the tour’s dominant player. What changed? An analysis by The Seoul Economic Daily of this season’s data shows the turnaround happened on the greens.
According to KLPGA Tour data as of the 28th, Seo now ranks among the tour’s best putters. Last year her strokes gained putting was minus 0.51 (103rd) and she averaged 30.95 putts per round (107th), meaning putting was costing her strokes. This year her strokes gained putting stands at 0.54 (10th), a jump of 93 places, and her putting average has fallen to 29.29 (2nd), cutting about 1.66 putts per round. What was once her weakness now earns her strokes.
Behind the turnaround was punishing practice. Kwon Ki-taek, Seo’s coach, said it took time for her to adjust to the fast greens and tricky slopes of the professional game. “Fortunately, she began to find stability in the second half of last year,” the coach said. “We judged that she had to raise her make rate from 4 to 5 meters to lower her scores, so during winter training we drew circles at 4 and 5 meters on the green and kept the lights on to practice until 10 p.m. every day. Once the wins came and her confidence grew, it created synergy.”
A putter change and a new grip also proved decisive. Seo, who had used TaylorMade’s Spider putter since her debut, switched in May to Titleist’s Scotty Cameron Studio Style Fastback. “The putter is the only club I have changed since my debut,” she said. “The claw grip I adopted midway through last season and the new putter fit together perfectly. After the switch I won for the first time in June and picked up a second win, then won two straight weeks in August to claim a major title.”
Sharper ball-striking also contributed to the leap. Her strokes gained from tee to green rose from 1.10 (26th) last year to 1.84 (3rd) this year. Strokes gained off the tee climbed from 0.30 (32nd) to 0.67 (12th), and strokes gained on approach shots from 0.77 (20th) to 1.00 (5th), giving her one of the tour’s best records for creating scoring chances on the way to the green.
With improved putting and more precise shotmaking working together, her total strokes gained exploded from 0.59 (41st) last year to 2.38 (1st) this year. That has underpinned her dominance in scoring average, where she leads at 70.27. Her cut-made rate has risen from 70% last year to 89.5%, and her top-10 finishes have jumped from four to nine.
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Original reporting by Chung Mun-young for Seoul Economic Daily.
AI-translated from Korean. Quotes from foreign sources are based on Korean-language reports and may not reflect exact original wording.
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