Born in
Taejon, she attended in that city and then in
Kongju City,
Chungnam Province, where she was the school's best amateur golfer. She then moved to Seoul for training. Pak turned professional in 1996, a year before she moved to the U.S. as a 20-year-old. In 1996 and 1997, she won six tournaments on the
LPGA of Korea Tour. Pak joined the LPGA Tour full-time for the year
1998, crowning her rookie season with victories in two majors: the
McDonald's LPGA Championship and
U.S. Women's Open. At just 20 years of age, she became the youngest-ever winner of the U.S. Women's Open. About.com writes that "Pak won a 20-hole playoff for that victory, making that tournament - at 92 holes in length - the longest tournament ever in women's professional golf." Four days after the U.S. Women's Open win, Pak shot a then-LPGA record 61 during the second round of the Jamie Farr Kroger Classic. She won the Rolex Rookie of the Year award for that season. Since 1998, she has gone on to win 21 more events on the Tour, including three more majors. In June 2007, at age 29, she qualified for the
World Golf Hall of Fame, surpassing
Karrie Webb as the youngest living entrant ever. (
Tom Morris, Jr., who died in 1875 at the age of 24, had been elected in 1975.) Pak has also competed in a professional men's event, at the 2003 SBS Super Tournament on the
Korean Tour. The Korean Tour was a feeder tour for the
Asian Tour and did not offer
world ranking points. She finished 10th in the event, according to the World Golf Hall of Fame "becoming the first woman to make the cut in a professional men's tournament since
Babe Zaharias did so in 1945." At the
2005 McDonald's LPGA Championship, she missed the cut for the first time in 29 majors. In an interview quoted on the
PGA Tour's website, she commented that she was searching for a balance between her golf and her personal life: "I've been a little bit unhappy about everything, my game, big game. I'm not really enjoying it at all, and I'm not doing anything with my ability. I know what I needed, a much better balance. I'm always putting a lot of pressure on myself". Eventually, she was found to have a finger injury. In 2006, she rediscovered her best form by winning the
McDonald's LPGA Championship for the third time to claim her fifth major title overall. In
2007, she won the
Jamie Farr Owens Corning Classic for the fifth time, making her the fourth player in LPGA history to win the same tournament five or more times (
Annika Sörenstam accomplished this feat at two tournaments). Perhaps the greatest tribute to her career to date came in a column by
Golf World writer Eric Adelson in 2008, who called Pak "a pioneer... who changed the face of golf even more than
Tiger Woods." When Pak came to the LPGA in 1998, she was the only South Korean player.
Ten years later, she was one of 45 South Koreans on tour, and the single largest source of revenue for the LPGA was the sale of TV rights in South Korea. Pak was the only South Korean on the LPGA Tour in the year 1998. Her spectacular triumph at the 1998 U.S. Women's Open encouraged many South Korean women to take up golf as a sport. She is regarded as a leader of the game in her home country and has also inspired the new generations of LPGA players
Na Yeon Choi and
Inbee Park who have followed her footsteps at the LPGA level. A statue of her now stands outside Gongju's stadium. This statue commemorates her signature moment: a successful shot from a water hazard to remain tied for first place in the 1998 U.S. Women's Open; this allowed her to force a sudden death playoff which she then won with "a tremendous birdie putt from nearly 20 feet on the second hole." This was a victory named by the
Korea Times as the 3rd most acclaimed moment in 60 years of South Korean sports history. Her shot was shown as the basis for the first episode of the South Korean TV drama
Birdie Buddy. On 17 March 2016, Pak announced that she would retire following the
2016 season. She retired the following 13 October, after completing the first round of South Korea's lone LPGA-sanctioned event, the
LPGA KEB Hana Bank Championship. ==Professional wins (39)==