‘Fisherman’s swing’ lands Choi a PGA tour event ticket

Home > Sports > Baseball

print dictionary print

‘Fisherman’s swing’ lands Choi a PGA tour event ticket

Choi Ho-sung, a journeyman Korean golfer who has become an Internet sensation with an eccentric swing, will play in his first PGA Tour event next month.

The 45-year-old player said Monday he has earned an invitation to the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, scheduled for Feb. 7-10 at the iconic Pebble Beach Golf Links in California. It will be the first PGA appearance for Choi, who has been playing primarily in Korea and Japan.

Choi has two victories each in Korea and Japan, but he is most famous for a swing that has been called everything from bizarre to crazy to electric.

Videos showing Choi in action have gone viral, and U.S. instructional magazines published frame-by-frame breakdowns of Choi’s swing, which fans now refer to as “the fisherman’s swing.” Choi proved he wasn’t just a curiosity by winning the Casio World Open in Japan in November.

Earlier this year, a PGA professional Derek Deminsky started an online petition to get Choi into the Waste Management Phoenix Open in February on a sponsor’s exemption. In the petition, Deminsky called Choi a “once in a generation golfer [...] arguably the most entertaining golfer to watch.”

The Phoenix Open, held in February in Scottsdale, Ariz., is famous for its raucous party atmosphere, the one PGA Tour stop where conventional gallery manners are thrown out the window and into the water hazard.

Yonhap
Log in to Twitter or Facebook account to connect
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
help-image Social comment?
s
lock icon

To write comments, please log in to one of the accounts.

Standards Board Policy (0/250자)