Professional golfer Danielle Kang is still on top of the world after taking part in opening day ceremonies for her hometown baseball team last year. Kang, 31, shared a video of herself wearing black leggings and a dark red sweatshirt, throwing the opening pitch at a San Francisco Giants game. “MLB Opening Day š¤ SF born š§” my first pitch at @sfgiants is a core memory,” she captioned the post. Here’s what Kang’s training and wellness routine looks like.
Kang had no intention of being a professional golfer growing up, and got into the game because of her brother. Now, she genuinely loves the sport. “My relationship with golf changed three or four years ago,” she told Golf Digest. “I love the game now. I love the process. I love getting better. I love working on shots and pulling them off during a tournament. I love making putts when I have to. I love everything about it.”
Kang is an accomplished taekwondo devotee. “It built a foundation in my life,” she told Golf Digest. “I trained for more than 10 years. You learn discipline, respect, self defense, and hard work. The explosiveness of taekwondo is similar to the explosiveness in the golf swing. But I don’t do martial-arts workout classes anymore because I’m scared that I’ll get hooked. It happened with kickboxing. I had to stop cold turkey.”
Kang switches up her workouts, especially when she’s on the road. “I do whatever is at hand,” she told Adidas. “It’s important to get my body moving in different directions because I don’t want it to be so stuck in just one sport and doing the same motions and bulking up my body. I like to do aerial, you know, the silks where you climb up and down the ropes? Or I find yoga places or do Pilates. And I’ve definitely done kickboxing before.”
Kang wants more athletes to feel comfortable asking for mental health support. “Seeking help for mental health needs to be normalized,” she told Golf Digest. “I’ve had help. I see a sport psychologist and a therapist so that I can talk about what I need to talk about. I lean on my friends a lot, too. However big or small the issue, I know I have to get my mind clear, so I can play. I also know it’s not always going to be clear. I’ve been learning to perform even when things are going on. I use box breathing [inhaling for four counts, holding your breath for four counts, exhaling for four counts and repeat] a lot on the course.”
Kang is thrilled her platform means she can do charitable work. “Golf is something that I want to get better at every year,” she told Adidas. “It’s something that I want to excel at. And my love for the sport hasn’t gone away, not even a little bit. The fact that it’s given me an opportunity, even outside of golf with organizations helping around the world, has given me an extra lift and extra inspiration in order to do better in golf, so that I can make even more of a difference.”