“I think 2024 was a gift year for me because I won three games that I didn’t even think about.”
This is the general review of Madasom (25, Samchully), who tied for first with multiple wins by garnering three wins in this season’s KLPGA Tour. “People around me tell me that this season was a successful one,” Madasom, who came back from a trip to Hong Kong to compensate for her hard work for the past year, told the Kookmin Ilbo. “First of all, I feel great because I overcame the slump that continued through the middle of the season.”
Madasom participated in 29 competitions this season and passed the cut in 23 competitions. She has won six top 10 awards, and she has won three of them: the Hana Financial Group Championship, the S-oil Championship, and the SK Telecom and SK Shields Championship. Her career is high, ranking 13th in prize money and 10th in grand prize points.
What’s unique is that all of their wins came after September when the cold wind began to blow. Including the first win in September last year, which he garnered in his second year since debut, his four wins in total were “Autumn Rising.” Then, he got the nickname “New Autumn Queen.”
When looking at the shot data, they are not very satisfactory. They rank 51st in driving distance, 71st in fairway settlement rate, 65th in iron green accuracy rate, and 18th in average putt count. Compared with indicators of Park Ji-young (28), Park Hyun-kyung (24), Park So-hyun (31), and Lee Ye-won (21), who tied for the most wins, overall, they seem to have fallen behind slightly.
Madasom responded coolly, “My tee shot didn’t go well. As the fairway hit rate fell, it had no choice but to have a knock-on effect on the green hit rate,” adding, “The driver’s flying distance is not a big deal. If the accuracy is increased, the rest can get better, so I don’t think it’s a big problem.”
In other words, as long as we increase the accuracy of driver shots, we can get better results than this year. Madasom said, “As the tee shots went back and forth, I think I lost some confidence overall until the middle of the season. This is a task that needs to be focused on and supplemented in this winter training camp.”
She will go on a 45-day off-season training in Vietnam in early January next year. She will focus on improving the accuracy of driver shots with her swing coaches Cho Ryeong-ah and Lee Mi-na, and focus on training.
There is another point that needs to be supplemented. It is none other than shot ballistic. “When the green is hard, the first bounce tends to stand out, so the ball goes farther than I thought,” he said. “So I’m planning to practice how to control the ballistics more freely.”
Madasom did not set a high goal for next season. “If you are greedy, you will get a bad result,” he said. “It would be nice to win multiple games, but as every year, my goal is to win one game. However, this year, I will do my best to win the title early in the season. I am satisfied if I am ranked below 20th in prize money.”
Madasom is known to study abroad in Canada. At age 9, he went abroad to study, not to study golf. Then, three years passed since he first started to play golf. He stopped by Korea for a while during vacation and started learning golf as a hobby.
“I think I had a lot of fun at the time. Then my mom said, ‘I want to try it as a player,’ so I said, ‘Yes,'” he said. “That’s why I didn’t go back to Canada and sat down in Korea.”
Madasom’s name “Dasom” is a pure Korean word that means “love.” It is an old saying that implies “love with affection,” not just love. He loves and values golf that started like that more than anything else, just like his name.
In this context, he was a bit late in his professional career compared to his peers. He had a desire to spend his golden years of life more fruitful while prolonging his amateur days.
“My top priority was to be selected for the national team,” Madasom said. “I thought it would be difficult for me to pursue both college and professional careers. That’s why I chose the golden age of my once-in-a-lifetime youth that I don’t want to miss. Fortunately, I was selected as a member of the national team, so my professional career is a little late, but I have no regrets.”
Compared to the late pro turn, four wins in just three years since debuting the tour is quite fast. What’s the secret? “It was because I let go of my mind a little bit,” he said. “I wanted to win my first championship last year and then again this year. As a result, I think I was overambitious and anxious at the beginning of the season. Since the middle of the season, I have decided to play more comfortably, but the result turned out great.” 메이저놀이터
Madasom says he is not a good golfer. As a result, he gets over it by practicing efficiently. “I don’t have a good sense of golf,” Madasom said. “I learn from experience. I don’t usually practice for a long time. I try to do it effectively while it is short. During the season, I can’t afford to spend much time for practice because it is a competition every week. The problem is that during the off-season, I take enough rest and practice short games in the morning and shots in the afternoon. All practices should be completed before 5 p.m. if possible.”
Madasom has won three of his four games in overtime. His overall overtime winning rate is three wins and one loss. The only overtime loss was tied for second place in the 37th Korean Women’s Open Golf Championship last year. The high overtime winning rate proves that he has a lot of guts.
“I think it’s because of more effective strategy than mental illness. Looking back, the loss of the Korean Women’s Open last year, which was the first playoff game in my life, was a medication,” he said. “At that time, my tee shot fell into the penalty area in the second playoff and I couldn’t take advantage of my chances to win the title. After that, I decided not to create such a crisis situation as much as possible. Due to that, I won all three playoff games.”
Madasom likes Justin Thomas and Dustin Johnson (U.S.), who are active in PGA Tour and LIV Golf, which are rare among female golfers. His cool swing looks great. I was wondering if he would like to join an overseas tour. “I don’t know if he will change his mind after a while, but not yet.
