Inbee Park Makes Her First Return Since Winning Gold in Rio 

It’s been a frustrating few months for Inbee Park, ever since she won Olympic gold at the Rio Olympics. This week marks her return to competitive action since then and she is cautiously optimistic for what lies ahead. 

“I feel really good,” Park said in a pre tournament press conference. “I haven’t felt much pain at all for the last couple of months. I think that’s a pretty safe sign.”

Park took a lot of time off after Rio, to ensure her injury would heal properly, “I didn’t touch a club after the Olympics for maybe four months. I started practicing in December and until now I have slowly gotten my practice time to a little bit longer and longer and now I’m back to pretty much regular routine.”  

In addition to Parks return, comes a very strong contingent of Korea ladies vying for success this week, including last weeks Australian Open winner Ha Na Jang, who will be hoping for back to back wins and add to her four LPGA titles.

The strength of the Korean contingent this week doesn’t get any weaker than the aforementioned, with this week also featuring the likes of 2016 Rookie of the Year In Gee Chun, 2015 Thailand LPGA Honda champion Amy Yang, 2016 LPGA Tour winners Hyo Joo Kim, Sei Young Kim (x2) and Jenny Shin. All of the Korean ladies teeing it up this week are talented, experienced and proven winners, which just further portrays that Korean ladies golf is still the worlds best.

With such a strong representation of the top Korean golfers, another victory for Korea would not come as a surprise this week. There’s no doubt it will be tough to win Lexi Thomsons 2016 title, but it is certainly a strong possibility for many of these Korean ladies, including Inbee Park, who won this event in 2013…