This week on the PGA Tour most of the prime gamers on the earth make the journey to Jeju Island, South Korea for the CJ Cup @ 9 Bridges, the primary occasion of the tour’s Asian swing. For the South Koreans within the subject like Byeong Hun An, Sung Kang, Si Woo Kim and others, it is the one spot on the schedule that gives them with an opportunity to play a house sport.
Being again in his house nation gave An a while to hang around together with his dad, An Jae-Hyeong, who gained the bronze medal in Males’s Doubles table tennis on the 1988 Summer season Olympics, which happened of their house metropolis of Seoul. As An explains within the video beneath, scoring even one level towards his father is tough, and scoring two is a minor miracle. That is why the one means it is a honest struggle is that if they put a handicap on the sport. This explicit time, that handicap was An’s dad having to play with a wood spoon:
An claims to have lastly crushed his dad right here, however man, it appears to be like like he actually needed to work for the win. In these highlights, Byeong Hun solely edged him out Four-Three. Unsure what rating they performed to, however dad definitely did not go down and not using a struggle. He might in all probability beat me by double digits with the wood spoon whereas additionally being blindfolded. What a legend.
Try this video of An Jae-Hyeong in motion on the 1986 Seoul Asian Video games, the place he clinched the lads’s crew gold medal on this match:
Completely electrical scene. In accordance with the YouTube description this was the primary victory of the Korean male crew towards China. “One of the vital dramatic and historic moments for the Korean Desk Tennis,” it reads. Yeah, we might say so!
Even crazier, three years after this, An Jae-Hyeong married Jiao Zhimin, who’s could be an excellent greater table tennis legend than her husband. Enjoying for China on the 1988 Summer season Olympics, she gained the silver medal in doubles and the bronze in singles. In 1991, the couple had Byeong Hun, who grew to become the youngest ever winner of the U.S. Beginner at age 17 in 2009. Whereas he is had only one win as a professional at European Tour’s BMW Championship in 2015, he is nonetheless had a really productive profession, racking up over $7.Three million in earnings on the PGA Tour. Not a foul checklist of accolades for the An household.