Last week I happened to be switching channels and came upon a documentary U.S. Open Epics: Two Winners, about the 1998 tournament and the battle between South Korean Se Ri Pak and American Jenny Chuasiriporn.

The doc was done in 2019 by the USGA and is not to be confused by the LPGA’s in 2023 to commemorate the 25^th anniversary of the tournament. The LPGA’s is titled led The Shot and told the story strictly from Pak’s perspective and her influence on her country at the time going through an economic hardship because o of the Asian Food Crisis. That led to unemployment, businesses going bankrupt and a general sense of disillusionment. Pak’s victory, according to a Korean journalist interviewed for the doc, said the win gave the people of South Korea hope that they could overcome anything.

But I think the doc did a huge disservice to the broader storyline captured in Two Winners because it had interviews from both players and how their careers and lives evolved afterward. It was far more compelling than The Shot.

Pak, the only South Korean on the LPGA Tour in 1998, was a hotshot rookie who had already won a major three weeks before. Chuasiriporn was an amateur in her final year at the Duke University. Both were 20 years old.

Because I had never seen the tournament, I didn’t know the result, and was intrigued by the doc, especially when the narrator said one golfer came away with a trophy, the other came home heartbroken, or “maybe it wasn’t quite that simple.”

The U.S. Women’s Open, according to an interview with former USGA Executive Director David Fay, is “the pinnacle, it’s the most important, it’s the most prestigious.” The tournament was played on the Fourth of July weekend on Blackwolf Run Golf Course in Wisconsin. Fay said the USGA knew it would be a memorable tournament but didn’t know it would become as successful and even memorable than imagined.

Played on a “severe but not unfair” course, according to Fay, players such as the legendary Nancy Lopez, who was in the tail-end of her brilliant career, were struggling. Lopez took a towel and attached it to her putter at one point in mock desperation. She was not alone.

Pak had a chance to win with a birdie putt on the 72^nd hole. She missed and thus the tournament went into an 18-hole playoff the next day with Chuasiriporn, who rallied strongly to force the tie. She made shot after shot with poise and sheer exuberance.

Pak’s drive on the 18^th hole in the playoff saw the ball land in the hazard a few feet from the water. She removed both shoes and shot from the water and the ball landed in the fairway. She made what seemed an impossible shot look easy. It became known as The Shot.

“That shot gave my country a huge impact to never give up, you still have a chance if you stay positive,” she said speaking in English. In the other documentary, which included subtitles, she spoke in Korean.

Chuasiriporn had a chance to win with a par but missed. Pak made bogey prompting the first sudden-death playoff in tournament history.

Pak won on the second hole with a long birdie.

She returned home a hero, given parades, ceremonies and a monument built in her honor. Indeed, she became a legend.

Pak would go on to put together a career that would include 25 LPGA Tour wins, five majors and induction in the World Golf Hall of Fame. More importantly, she led to more than 50 South Korean players now competing on the LPGA Tour, many of them prominent.

Meanwhile, Chuasiriporn led her school to a national title, but struggled as a pro because, as she says in the documentary, her heart wasn’t it. Quite simply, it was not the lifestyle she wanted.

She quit seven years after turning pro and went to school to become a nurse. She married and reverted back to her given birth name, Wanalee.

But the American-born Chuasiriporn led to a surge of Thailand-born LPGA Tour players because her parents are Thai.

So having watched the doc, I get the meaning behind what the narrator said in the beginning that one player came away with a trophy, the other went home heartbroken “or maybe it wasn’t that simple.”

As the narrator summed up in the doc, there were no losers and the biggest winner might have been the game of golf, forever transformed by a pair of 20-year-olds.

And titling the doc Two Winners made perfect sense.