Second Place Was Her Best Memory of the 1999 Season

Junior Ina Kim of Harvard-Westlake High won the Mission League title, was the medalist in the Southern Section North team regional and helped the Wolverines to a second-place finish in the section’s team championships during the 1999 high school girls’ golf season.

Yet her fondest memory will be from the section’s individual championships when she finished second to her older sister Hana, a senior at Brentwood.

“That was totally unexpected,” Kim said. “I didn’t think I had played well enough to be up there. When I came in [after the round], I was thinking that maybe I was in the top 10.”

Kim, The Times’ region girls’ golfer of the year, shot a two-over-par 74 on a blustery day in the section championships at Mission Lakes Country Club in Desert Hot Springs on Nov. 16 to tie for second with Kim Kowabunpat of Upland and Hwanhee Lee of Cerritos.

Kim defeated Kowabunpat on the second sudden-death playoff hole after Lee headed home before the playoff started.

“I really wanted to get second because it was my sister who was in first,” Kim said. “I knew it would mean a lot to us to finish first and second.”

The Kims were unable to duplicate their 1-2 finish in the CIF-Women’s Southern California Golf Assn. championships at The Members’ Club in Murietta on Nov. 30 when Northwestern-bound Hana tied for third with an even-par 72 and Ina finished seventh with a 74.

But Kim’s finish against a 90-player field that included the top golfers from the Southern, San Diego, Central and City sections capped a season in which she was the dominant player in the region.

She averaged 1.3 strokes above par for nine holes, 1.5 strokes better than anybody else in the region.

She was the region’s top finisher in the North team regional, in the section individual championships and in the CIF-WSCGA tournament and she tied sophomore teammate Emma Stachowicz for low-score honors in the section team championships.

She missed several matches during the regular season in order to catch up on her school work after playing in the United States-Europe junior match at New Seabury (Mass.) Country Club in late September but she played well upon her return.

“She’s so solid in all aspects of her game,” Coach Kuval Kochar of Harvard-Westlake said. “Whether it’s her driving, her short game or her putting, she’s very solid.

“She has a very even temperament. You can’t tell by watching her whether she’s having a good round or a bad round.”