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Top-ranked Inbee Park winning the United States Women's Open in 2008 at age 19.
MOUNT DORA, Fla. — Inbee Park was 10 when she rose from her bed in the middle of the night back home in Seoul to watch her South Korean compatriot Se Ri Pak win the 1998 United States Women's Open on television.
Three years later, Park, her sister, Inah, and their mother, Sung, packed up and moved to the United States while their father, Gun Gyu, stayed home to run his business. The Parks settled here in this suburb north of Orlando with fewer than 13,000 residents, where the girls went to school and learned English.
Inbee had just turned 13 and was budding as a golfer in 2001. Inah was starting to play at 11. They were enrolled in a golf academy for South Koreans run by Charlie Yoo at Black Bear Golf Club in nearby Eustis. Inbee progressed quickly.
"When she won the 2002 U.S. Girls' Junior championship and came back home to Mount Dora, I had her autograph some golf balls for me," said David Reed, whose wife, Jeannie, was Park's English teacher and golf coach at Christian Home and Bible School, a private school with 550 students.
"I said, 'Inbee, you know this is just the beginning, don't you?' " he said. "She just smiled."
After two and a half years in Mount Dora, the Park family moved to Las Vegas, where Inbee began fine-tuning her game at the Butch Harmon School of Golf. She turned professional at 17, posting 11 top-10 finishes on the 2006 Futures Tour (now the Symetra Tour).
"I don't want to go to the L.P.G.A. Tour and just make cuts and never win," she said in 2006, when she finished No. 3 among the Futures Tour's money winners and qualified for the L.P.G.A. Tour. "I want to be the best player in the world someday."
Park's career took another leap in 2008 when, at 19, she won the United States Women's Open, her first victory as a professional. Now 25, she is the world's top-ranked female player.
This year, Park won the tour's first three majors — the Kraft Nabisco, the L.P.G.A. Championship and the United States Women's Open — then tied for 42nd in the British Open. If she wins the Evian Championship this weekend in France, she will become the first L.P.G.A. player with four major tournament victories in a calendar year.
Yet Park is still remembered for her youthful dedication to the game at Black Bear Golf Club, where she, her sister and four South Korean boys took lessons from Yoo and practiced six days a week.
"From the pro shop, I could see the range," said Rafe Kirian, who was Black Bear's pro shop manager at the time. "And every time I looked out there, Inbee was either on the range or on the putting green."
"She hit close to a thousand balls a day, and chipped and putted for two to three hours," Kirian added. "It was very businesslike, with the same beautiful rhythm and swing tempo that she still has."
A typical day for young Inbee would be to go to school, then head to Black Bear and practice with Yoo and her school team until dark. Jeannie Reed tutored the Park girls in English at their home several nights a week.
"Inbee had lots of golf trophies at their house," Reed said, "but she downplayed it and called them 'pieces of glass.' She was more proud of showing me her room, her puppy or sharing her mom's Korean food."
Kirian said he put up a large sign in the Black Bear pro shop after Park won the 2002 United States Girls' Junior that read, "We're proud of you, Inbee!" When she walked into the clubhouse and saw the sign, he said, she blushed and hugged him as he put a Black Bear Golf Club cap on her head.
"I met great people there and got great energy from them, which helped a lot," Park said recently by e-mail.
In the fall of 2003, the Park sisters helped their school advance to the state high school golf championship for the first time. When the team finished third, Inbee was disappointed but the rest of the squad was ecstatic, Reed said.
"We wouldn't have been there if it weren't for Inbee," said Lauren Brown Smith, who was also on the team. "But she never made us feel bad for not being golf all-stars."
Another former teammate, Sara Hill, said, "We took the game seriously, but we also knew we weren't going to play college golf or go on to the L.P.G.A. Tour."
"Inbee showed us complete and total dedication, and she worked her butt off to get where she is now," added Hill, the new girls' golf coach at Christian Home and Bible School. "She didn't just ride her talent."
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