Joh's window on the competition is colored by her self-deprecation.
Naturally, Joh says she was horrible at first ("Squirrels ran away from me out of fear," she claims). Somehow she got the hang of it, though, winning four AJGA tournaments before heading to UCLA in the fall of 2005. Once there, she focused on the plague of many great ball-strikers: a suspect short game. "You hit it close all the time and you're putting often for birdies and when you don't make them, the confidence can go," Forsyth says.
The work Joh put in on her chipping and putting has paid off. After posting only nine sub-par rounds as a freshman, she had 14 as a sophomore en route to becoming a first-team All-American. Thus far in 2007-08, she has 12.
If Joh exaggerates about her lack of ability, rarely mentioning the 2006 U.S. Women's Amateur Public Links title she has on her résumé, the same can't be said about her knack for finding herself in some embarrassing situations. There actually are several entertaining Joh stories that have become part of college golf folklore, some Joh, a communications major, has helped spread by writing about them on an Internet blog.
Like the time in the college event where she didn't notice until she was on the first tee that her skort was on backward. ("Had to go find a bush real quick," she says.) Or when she qualified for the LPGA's Safeway Classic last August and saw Nancy Lopez in the locker room. Joh was so star-struck, she literally walked into a wall as Lopez passed by. ("I'm not very good at multitasking.")
Then there was the one from last year's Pac-10 Championship: The night before the team was to leave for the tournament, Joh realized she had forgotten to pick up her golf clothes at the dry cleaners. The store was closed the next day, so Joh decided to spend the entire night outside the place in her Honda CRV, hoping the owner might appear anyway. "Sure enough he got there at about 5:30 a.m.," she recalls. "I had left about 20 messages on the store phone. He came out with my stuff and said 'Don't do that again.' " (For the record, Joh won the tournament.)
While providing some comic relief for her teammates, Joh has become more than just a class clown. With no seniors on the roster, she has helped acclimate the younger players into college life. Moreover, Forsyth is encouraged that Joh is starting to pat herself on the back, if only occasionally.
"All humor aside, if you've spent the majority of your career viewing yourself as not as good, sometimes you start to believe the things you say," Forsyth says. "We've emphasized it's important to appreciate the abilities of others but not to minimize your own abilities."
"I think I'm a little more comfortable in my own skin," says Joh. Still, ask her about her chances of victory in the NCAA postseason, and she falls back into her old habits. "Winning? I haven't even thought about winning," Joh says.
Before she can utter another word, Joh is told to knock it off if she's about to finish her thought by saying she's not good enough. "OK," she laughs. "Then I just don't want to embarrass myself."
Fair enough.
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