Birdie Kim - Good Game, Bad Name

It was another unbelievable finish at the 60th U.S. Women's Open at Cherry Hills. Again, the USGA managed to make the best golfers in the world look like amateurs playing a corporate scramble event.

Sunday turned out to be a major choke-fest as the hottest names in women's golf fell by the wayside. Annika, Wie, Ochoa, and Creamer all crumbled under the U.S. Open pressure. One name on the leaderboard that I expected to blow up big time was the unheralded Birdie Kim. The only thing is, she didn't. She pulled a Michael Campbell and played clutch golf all day. She capped it all off by firing the only birdie on the 18th hole to win by 2 strokes over amateurs Morgan Pressel and Brittany Lang. Truly amazing stuff.

But the whole time, I just couldn't stop thinking about her name. I mean "Birdie Kim" sounds more like the daily special at my local Korean BBQ restaurant than someone's name. Was her Korean name really "Bo-Dee," but it was butchered into English by someone at Ellis Island? Were her parents just nuts? My mind was racing for a logical explanation. It turns out that her given name is Ju-Yun, but she changed her name earlier this year. She explained that "...there are a lot of Korean names in the LPGA. They all sound similar to mine, so I wanted something different, something simple and easy."

That sounds like a weak excuse to me. I think what actually happened was that someone once told her about the old adage, "you have to make a name for yourself." Somehow it must have gotten lost in the translation from English into Korean and she literally made a name for herself.

OK, that's fine to make your own name, but why the heck would you make it "Birdie"? What's wrong with "Jennifer", "Mary", or "Jane"? If you want to go more exotic, there's always names like "Madonna", "Angelina", and "Paris". According to Ms. Kim, "Birdie is good in golf and it's good for me. You get a good feeling when you make a birdie. Everything is nice. Everybody likes that name." Well I don't like it. In fact, I think that it's ridiculous.

The only good excuse that I can come up with for giving herself such a laughable name is that she made a deal with the Golf Gods. My guess is that they promised to bless her with golfing success if she changed her name to a golf term.

To some, that theory holds merit. Many golfers are so desperate to play well that they would change their name to something bizarre in a heartbeat if it would endow them with golf prowess. I just hope that this doesn't start a trend. Birdie Kim along with "Eagle" Inkster and "Albatross" Ochoa would make the LPGA sound like a wrestling federation.

I better take a careful look at my birth certificate. Based on my golf experiences, I have a strong suspicion that my parents originally named me "Bogey."