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Almost a decade later, Seong Eun-jeong gets once-promising career back on track with KLPGA Tour card

Published: 01 Dec. 2025, 12:38 Updated: 01 Dec. 2025, 18:09

Seong Eun-jeong poses during an interview with the JoongAng Ilbo at Suwon Country Club in Yongin, Gyeonggi, on Sunday. [JOONGANG ILBO]

Nearly a decade after her failure at the 2016 BC Card-Hankyung Ladies Cup, Seong Eun-jeong has earned her way back to the KLPGA Tour by securing her 2026 Tour card in November, overcoming years of injuries and a prolonged slump.

At the 2016 tournament, Seong, then a 17-year-old high school student, played alongside Park Sung-hyun and held a three-shot lead. However, Seong lost all of that lead on the final hole after making a triple bogey, then fell to Oh Ji-hyun in a playoff.

Seong, now 25, placed 22nd at the KLPGA’s 2026 regular tour qualifying tournament on Nov. 14, securing a full Tour card for the 2026 season.

The daughter of former basketball players, Seong was expected to excel early in the early stages of her pro career.

She won 22 titles as an amateur national team player. Seong then finished third at a KLPGA event in 2013 when she was just 13. In 2016, she notched the impressive feat of winning both the U.S. Girls’ Junior Championship and the U.S. Women’s Amateur Championship in the same year. She had also won the U.S. Girls’ Junior Championship in 2015.

Seong Eun-jeong holds her trophy after winning the 2015 U.S. Girls’ Junior Championship on July 25, 2015 at Tulsa Country Club in Tulsa, Oklahoma. [JOONGANG ILBO]

No female golfer had ever won both in the same year. On the men’s side, Tiger Woods and Nicholas Dunlap each won the U.S. Junior Amateur and the U.S. Amateur, but not in the same season.

Seong's collapse in 2016 came after she hit her tee shot out of bounds. The yips started to creep in afterward.

“I often woke up from nightmares of hitting my drive out of bounds,” she said in an interview with the JoongAng Ilbo at Suwon Country Club in Yongin, Gyeonggi, on Sunday. “The years from 2021 to 2023 drained me most. I couldn’t get into tournaments. Even in the second-tier tour qualifying, I missed the cut in the first round. There are only four qualifying events a year, so I only played four rounds. Some years I played just six rounds including the first-tier qualifying preliminaries. The more I failed, the more pressure I felt each time I entered qualifying.”

She also struggled with stamina in 2018 when she played on the U.S. second-tier tour because she had undergone hormone treatment. She said walking nine holes sometimes felt difficult.

Seong's slump ended up stretching across more than one-third of her life. During the break, she had time to think more about her relationship with her family. Her parents dedicated everything to her career, even getting her flights in business class for junior tournaments overseas.

“I feel very grateful. But I also wish they treated me like an ordinary daughter, not only as a golfer,” she said.

Seong Eun-jeong speaks during an interview with the JoongAng Ilbo at Suwon Country Club in Yongin, Gyeonggi. [JOONGANG ILBO]

She moved out of her parents' house early last year. She taught golf lessons to earn living expenses. Her parents and Seong herself once pushed together without much success, but she said the situation improved while she was juggling part-time work.

“It gave me peace of mind and time to look back at myself fully,” she said. “People around me said my parents put too much pressure on me, but when I looked back, I realized I put pressure on myself.”

She said she drew strength from PGA star Scottie Scheffler’s interviews.

“He said there are far more important things in life than golf skills and that he wouldn’t find ultimate satisfaction or identity in results or success,” she said. “I used to feel nervous every time I entered a tournament, wondering what would happen if I played poorly. Now I think nothing happens if I don’t play well.”

Teaching also introduced her to new people. She began seeing a world beyond her parents. She believes physical maintenance helped her endure the yearslong comeback.

“There were times I drank because I felt distressed, but I run two or three times a week, sometimes up to 15 kilometers [9.3 miles],” she said. “I like the sound of my footsteps and feel calm when I follow that rhythm.

“People used to call me a long hitter, but a lot of players hit it farther now. I grew up thinking my strength was my driver because the media kept saying that when I was young, but my real strength is my iron play.”

She sought advice when she struggled to find answers in her life.

“I reached out to KPGA golfer Choi Jin-ho and others when I didn’t know what to do,” Seong said. “I want to become someone who can help others too.”

“Lately my mother plays a lot of golf. But she still asks me, ‘Why did you make a bogey today?’ When she says things like that, I realize she still doesn’t really understand golf.”

This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
BY SUNG HO-JUN [[email protected]]