The best player nobody knows

South Korea's K.J. Choi ranks among the game's elite. But can he win the big one?

K.J. Choi hits his tee shot on the fifth hole during the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship on Feb. 23, 2008.

Photo: Getty Images

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By Dave Kindred

Photo By Getty Images

April 2008

K.J. Choi is sometimes called "Tank" because he's short, wide, strong and can flat crush your bones. He's also "Hawk" in recognition of his iron focus. A Korean sportswriter, perhaps lost in English, tried "Tyson on Field," a boxing/golf mash-up "describing the sharp eyes on his dark face" as he tries to "subjugate the golf world." On June 3, 2007, while explaining his victory in the Memorial, the tournament created and overseen by his idol, Jack Nicklaus, Choi spoke of himself as "Mr. One Foot."

For two or three weeks, he had left shots short. "There's a lot of occasions," he told reporters, "where I have fallen one foot short of the green." One foot short, the ball spins into a bunker. One foot short, it backs into water. Thus, Mr. One Foot.

Someone asked who gave him the nickname.

"It's me," Choi said, laughing.

He's also about one foot short of greatness, so near that the temptation is to type a silly sentence like, "He just needs to win a major." The temptation is irresistible because Kyoung-Ju Choi's story is already so fabulous that there is every reason to think the fable-coming-true will get even better.

"In America," he says,"if you work hard, it provides you the footsteps to pursue your dream."

Hot pursuit: Choi has earned $17 million on the PGA Tour. Lives in high-dollar Texas, just outside Houston. Married to his longtime sweetheart, Kim. Three children: David, 10; Amanda, 6; and Daniel, 4.

In his second tournament this season, the Sony in Hawaii, Choi won for the seventh time on tour. Then, as is his habit, he gave away a chunk of the prize money -- $320,000 to families of 40 victims of a warehouse fire near Seoul. His charitable donations, which include $90,000 from his first tour victory six years ago, began in 1996 a few years after he joined a Christian church.

He just needs to win a major.

He has been third in a Masters, sixth and seventh in the PGA, eighth in a British Open, 15th in the U.S. Open -- all in the last four years. As of mid-February he was ninth in the World Golf Ranking.

"Winning a major," says Choi, who would be the first Korean to do it, "can take you to a whole new world. I want to experience what that feeling is like, to win the biggest tournament in the world."

An amazing ambition, that. This from a man born on an island where there is no golf course. His father was a fisherman and farmer on Wando, south of the peninsula, in the Korea Strait. The nearest golf course was on the mainland, a three-hour drive. The boy Choi first touched a golf club at age 16.

He had been a weight-lifter, so strong that at age 13 and 95 pounds he could squat 330 pounds. But a physical-education teacher thought Choi was too small to be a lifter. He saw a golfer's body and gave the boy a book. "If you become a professional golfer," the teacher said, "there's a good future ahead of you." The book was a primer on golf's fundamentals, shown in drawings of Jack Nicklaus at work.

"When I tried it the way he told me to do it," Choi said of his pictorial mentor, "it felt really good."

By way of a bridge to the mainland, Choi drove to the metropolis Gwangju to work on his game there in addition to coaching from pro Nam Jong Yu at a driving range near his home. In time, Choi left the island for school in Seoul, a move that improved his game and saddened his mother.