Tee Time: 11:00am
Players: Kevin, Heedo, Jaehyun
This was the annual Dell Technologies Classic for 2024. This is the annual golf tournament held in Korea by Dell Technologies for their partners and customers. I have been lucky enough to get an invitation for 3 years and it is an event that I don’t miss…it’s really an awesome event.
They start the day with a clinic from a local pro. This year it was Nayeon Choi giving a putting clinic. Nayeon is very famous and is a major winner on the LPGA tour (US Open) and she retired 2 years ago. In her final match at the BMW Championship held in Korea (Oak Valley), she got a hole in one and won a BMW SUV! The main takeaways that I had from her clinic:
Your eyes should be position right on top of the ball (your dominant eye).
Keep your head steady and resist the urge to immediately move your head towards the target after you make contact.
Hold your putter stance after contact.
This year’s event was held at South Springs CC in icheon. It’s a decent golf course but I have no plans to come back here again. There is a fertilizer plant or something like that nearby so there is a massive stench in most of the holes…it’s really gross.
Last year was at Cascadia and that was awesome. The year before was at The Players and that was a great course as well.
The announcer was Jaekyong Hong again and she’s really cool. She even recognized me this time so we got a nice picture together.
I was placed in the lead team so I took part in the ceremony to tee off using exploding balls. Kevin is the head of Dell Technologies Korea and is a nice guy so it was nice spending 18 holes with him to chat and get to know him better, etc.
The day starts with hand massages and the clinic. Then we have breakfast and 2 presentations (Dell gives an update and this year Nvidia gave an update as the primary sponsor of the event). Then we play 18 holes of golf shotgun style. Each group is assigned a golf pro to give a 9 hole field lesson. The other 9 holes are played without a pro. After the round of golf you can shower, clean up, and then we have dinner. After dinner is entertainment (usually a band) and is concluded with prizes. They usually get a driver for me so it’s great that I can drink a little bit at dinner and get a ride home!
Since I was in the leading VIP team, we had a pro with us for all 18 holes. Our pro was Miso Lim. “Miso” means Smile so her nickname is “Smile” Lim. She was a nice pro and gave me a bunch of tips. Her main tip was that I need to stay down on my swing especially on my follow through.
I’m actually not a big fan of field lessons because being on the course it’s really the last place you want to make major swing changes. It’s nice to make little tweaks here and there but usually I can’t hit the ball trying to make a drastic swing change that just feels really odd, etc.
There is always a “Beat the Pro” hole where you all tee off on a par 3 and if you can get closer to the hole than the pro you win. I beat the pro! I won a starbucks mug. The pro was Jisun Chun who I met last year at the short game clinic. She’s cool too.
Before dinner, they had a quick trivia question…the question was “If you get 1 under par it’s called a ‘birdie’, 2 under par is an ‘eagle’, 3 under par is an ‘albatross’…what do you call 4 under par?”
I raised my hand…and gave the quick correct answer of “Condor!”
I won a prize which turned out to be a cheese plate. The announcer called me up on stage and said that she likes my English pronunciation of “Dell Technologies” and “Condor” and asked me to say it again in the microphone so I did that for everyone’s entertainment.
The band was a folk band and they were pretty good.
It was an awesome event as usual.
