The best golfer in Colorado doesn’t play on the PGA or Champions tours, like David Duval and Mark Wiebe, or scuffle around on mini-tours, a la former University of Colorado teammates Derek Tolan and Kenny Coakley. Nor is she preparing to return to a highly successful collegiate career in California, like Steve Ziegler of Stanford, or Wiebe’s son Gunner at San Diego.
No, the player at the top of the list is Somin Lee, a bubbly 18-year-old senior at Overland High School who hopes her ever-burgeoning skills will someday allow her to compete with the game’s greats. Meanwhile, she’s digging the attention her game is garnering.
“I like it when I go to tournaments and people ask, ‘Are you Somin Lee? Are you the state champion?’ ” Lee said. “I’m like, ‘Yeah . . . I like this.’ “
There’s certainly been ample opportunity for people to notice her. Lee’s excellent summer actually began in spring, when she won the girls’ 5A state title for the Trailblazers. Since then, she’s effectively dominated play, both locally and nationally; in 10 events on the Colorado Junior Girls circuit, Lee has five wins and three runner-up finishes. Last month, she won a national American Junior Golf Association event in Nebraska and finished second in another prestigious tournament in Florida.
All this from someone who has been playing golf only four years as a way to get her older brother to stop being mean to her. Now there’s talk of successfully defending her state crown, playing collegiately — the University of Denver is an early favorite — and perhaps playing on the LPGA Tour.
“That’s my goal, but I don’t know if I’m good enough, since I haven’t played as long as a lot of the other girls have,” Lee said. “I’d like to see how good I am and how good I can be.”
Lee insists that these are her dreams, not those of her parents. Her father is a PGA member in golf-mad South Korea, a country that not only boasts Y.E. Yang, aiming to defend his title in this week’s PGA Championship in Wisconsin, but which has also dominated play on the LPGA in recent years. Four of the world’s top 10 women’s players, including No. 1 Jiyai Shin, hail from the country.
Since Se Ri Pak burst onto the scene 12 years ago, winning two majors in her rookie season, there has been an abundance of stories about parents pushing their girls to play, in hopes of them turning pro.
So there can sometimes be a little too much attention. Parents weren’t allowed to attend the Florida event, but after a poor opening round, Lee called home and got an earful from Dad.
At the conclusion of the tournament, weather delays caused a two-day ordeal in returning to Colorado. When she finally arrived in town, Lee only had an hour to make her tee time for a Colorado junior event — and she didn’t have her clubs or golf shoes, which were lost in transit somewhere between Florida and Colorado.
Lee admits her inclination was to not play; her dad pointed out that she was in a tight race with Lindsay McGetrick, daughter of renowned instructor Mike, for the top spot in the series standings. She decided to play, buying a pair of shoes at the pro shop and carrying her dad’s clubs to the first tee.
She also extracted a promise: Given the situation, there could be no criticism.
“I told him, no comments, and he said ‘Okay, deal,’ ” Lee said. “But I was 3-over-par at the turn, and he came up to me and said, ‘Somin, how can you play so bad?’ And I was like, ‘Dad, you promised!’ But then I told myself I would play better on the back.”
Indeed, Lee gathered herself enough to shoot a 71 for the day before winning the event and topping McGetrick by nine strokes.
That brought a smile to everyone’s faces, even Dad’s.
“I give her more pressure so she can deal with it and handle it better — she plays better when I give her more pressure,” Jin said, with Somin acting as translator.
“He says he’s forcing me to play better; it’s really hard to be on the LPGA, it’s hard playing golf. He says what he really wants is for me just to have fun and enjoy it. He’s not forcing me to play.”
