Putting Around in Koreatown

Considering that a mere $4 at the Olympic Golf School and Driving Range in Koreatown gets you 50 golf balls and a club, it’s surprising the place hasn’t been overrun by unemployed screenwriters hacking out their rage. Actually, its been overrun by tiny little girls with nine-irons.

“They come with their mothers and their grandfathers and their coaches,” says range owner Joseph Rho, who has noticed a threefold increase in girl golfers since 21-year-old Korean golf phenom Se Ri Pak won her first pro championship last year. “Now everyone wants to be the new Se Ri,” he adds. With girls as young as 5 flocking to the links, the pro shop is selling starter kits that include a shrunken wood driver, nine-iron and putters.

Minhee and Jinhee Hwang travel from the San Fernando Valley to practice six times a week. Today they’re here to work on their chipping. “Our parents always told us to learn golf for business,” shouts 16-year-old Minhee over the traffic on Olympic, “but we thought it was for old people.”

“Until Se Ri Pak,” adds Jinhee, 14, as the girls hurry off to meet their coach.

The mania for golf is nothing new in Koreatown, which boasts no fewer than six ranges. Rho attributes his always-packed links to the stratospheric cost of golfing in Korea, where it can cost as much as $150 to play 18 holes. “Here it’s only $20 or $30,” he says. “The first thing Koreans do when they get off the plane is play golf. They don’t even want to have lunch.”

Rho’s son, Peter, has a slightly different take. “If you want to do business in the Korean community, you pretty much have to play golf,” he says. “That’s just how you network.”

Toward the end of the day, you can watch the sun set from the upper deck and the little girls being replaced by businessmen putting on golf cleats in the parking lot below. By 8 o’clock, they’re lined up in a row, each on his own Astro Turf octagon, swinging away at flag targets. By the time the floodlights go on, there are so many balls on the grass that it looks like snow. Julio, the ball collector, can be seen lurching about the field in his mesh-protected cart. “At some golf courses they aim at the ball collectors,” Peter Rho remarks. “But people are more polite in Koreatown.”

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Olympic Golf School and Driving Range, (213) 384-8415.