Choi Kyung Ju
Sunday, January 29th, 2012 11:50:32 by Kashif Khan
Choi Kyung Ju aka K.J Choi was born in Wando South Korea on 19th May 1970. Choi was not very keen on golf early on, in fact he used to be a power lifter, and was able to squat 350 pounds as a 95 pound 13 year old, thus nicknamed Tank by fellow South Koreans. Choi only took up golf after one of his teachers recommended him to take it up at the age of 16.
Soon Choi realized he was a natural at it and started competing at higher levels, and turned professional in 1994. Choi’s first professional win came in 1996 Korean Open and the Japan Golf Tour. Choi qualified for membership of the US based PGA Tour by finishing tied 35th at the 1999 qualifying tournament and became the first Korean to qualify for the PGA Tour card.
Choi became the first Korean to win the PGA tour in 2002 and followed his good form to win the Tampa Bay Classic. Hitting a purple patch of form, Choi won his first European Tour in 2003 and his last to date.
Choi represented South Korea in the WGC-World Cup in 2002-03 and 2005 and was also a member of the International Team in the Presidents Cup in the year 2003 and 2007.
2007 was another good year for Tank, he won the the Jack Nicklaus’s Memorial Tournament, and the AT&T National. The wins moved Choi in the Top 10 of the Official World Golf Rankings (OWGR) and after winning the Sony Open in Hawaii moved to number 7.
In May 2011 Choi won the biggest PGA Tour victory of his career when he won The Players Championship in a playoff against David Toms.
In addition to being such a good player Choi is a very good person as well, a devout Christian and a regular at giving charities through his K.J. Choi Foundation. He donated $320,000 of his earnings to the victims’ families of a warehouse fine in Seoul, South Korea, which killed over forty people. He also donated $200,000 to help victims of the tornados that ravaged the south eastern United States in April of 2011.
Choi is the best player ever to come out of Korea to date, and he is considered amongst the best of the lot in modern golf, has an all round game and does not really have a weakness in his game, the only thing between him at the Top rank would be a mixture of luck and mental toughness. If it is a day where his game is on song, he is almost unbeatable.
He lives in the United States right now in Southlake, Texas near fellow South Korean golfer Yang Yong-eun. Choi was once quoted that the only difficulty he feels living in the United States is because it’s such a big country touring is very difficult and it is really hard for Asian men who are not used to such long frequent travels.
Choi’s pervious goals in golf were to get into the top 100 and then move into the top 30 and eventually win, he achieved those goals in 2002, his new goal is to win a major and the way he is playing he is bound to achieve that goal sooner than later.
Short URL: https://www.newspakistan.pk/?p=10961
Posted by Kashif Khan
on Jan 29 2012. Filed under Sports, World.
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