2007 Michelob Ultra Open: Lee For All

One of the more remarkable elements of the Korean success on tour has been the relatively recent surge of good results by players named Lee. A few years ago, there were only a few Lees on tour, including a player born in England named Jung Yeon Lee. She joined the tour in 2002, and was having a fairly middling career until the end of the 2003 season where, all of a sudden, she caught fire. In the space of just a few months, she notched multiple second place finishes, shot a 60 at the first event of 2004 (still the lowest score ever achieved by any of the Korean golfers), and competed in the final group on Sunday at the 2004 Kraft Nabisco, where she was a witness to the epic duel between Aree Song and Grace Park that resulted in Grace's first (and to date only) Major victory. Yet just as quickly as that run had started, it ended again, and Lee faded back into the crowd, only occasionally making an impression after that.

In 2005, another Lee joined the tour, and after a slow start, she turned into a powerful player who won an event, contended several more times, and finished in the top ten on the money list. Her name was Meena Lee (pictured above), although she sometimes went by Mi Na Lee or Mee Lee. However she chose to spell her name that week, Meena had shown from a young age that she was a force to be reckoned with when, as a teenager, she won the KLPGA's Rookie and Player of the Year awards in 2002. After that she came to America to try her luck on the Futures Tour, but didn't have much success. It looked like she might be a one hit wonder for a while, but in 2004 she qualified for the LPGA tour at Q-School, and in 2005 had a breakout season that established her as one of the top players on tour.

In late 2005, a JY Lee did in fact win a tournament, but it was Jee Young, not Jung Yeon, who did it. The event was the CJ 9 Bridges Classic, the annual LPGA event held in South Korea. Jee Young (pictured) became the second non-member of the LPGA tour to win this event, and the second KLPGA rookie after Shi Hyun Ahn. Jee Young joined the tour as a rookie in 2006, where she had a marvelous season, contending multiple times for trophies and finishing 20th on the money list. But as it turned out, there was another new player named Lee who proved to be an even stronger rookie than Jee Young. Her name is Seon Hwa Lee. Seon Hwa had turned pro at the tender age of 14, and won her first KLPGA event the following year, becoming the youngest winner in the history of that tour. Still only 20, but with years of pro experience under her belt, she arrived on the LPGA tour following a successful 2005 campaign on the Futures Tour, where she finished first on the money list to earn her exempt status on the LPGA. In one of the deepest rookie fields in LPGA history, Seon Hwa easily walked away with the top Rookie honors, accumulating three second place finishes and a win in the process. The high point for the Lees in 2006 probably came at the Fields Open in Hawaii, the year's second event, where Meena beat Seon Hwa in the first ever all-Lee playoff in LPGA history.

In 2007, Jung Yeon Lee, now renamed Sarah Lee because that's what her nanny used to call her when she was a child (and not because of the snack cake company!), experienced a renaissance in her game, slowly climbing back to respectable finishes in the first few events of the year. She, Meena, and Jee Young all had something else in common, however. They and three other Korean ladies living in the Orlando area formed a club in the off season to motivate each other to play as well as they could. The club was called the Golf Mania Group, and besides the three Lees, the members are second year player Sun Young Yoo, Sae Hee Son, and Hall of Famer to be Se Ri Pak. The group has all sorts of rules to inspire members to play their best. Every bogey or double bogey in a tournament round would cost a player money that would be thrown into a communal kitty. In any given tournament, the top two finishers would be fine, but players finishing lower than that would be fined. At the end of the year, the group intends to donate the money they raise to a Korean charity yet to be named. As of May, the group had already raised nearly $3,000 through their fines.

Coming into the Michelob Ultra Open, which was contested in Williamsburg, Virginia, from May 10th - 13th, the Koreans had finally ended their long winless drought of 2007. Mi Hyun Kim (pictured at right with Grace Park and Se Ri Pak) had won the previous week's SemGroup Championship for the first Korean win of 2007. She grabbed many early headlines at the Michelob by announcing on Tuesday that she was giving $100,000 of her winnings to aid the victims of the tornado in Greensburg, Kansas. The question was in the air: would the Koreans be inspired by Kimmie's big heart and success in Tulsa to make it two wins in a row?

The Michelob is without doubt one of the premiere events on the LPGA schedule. It had produced four top players as winners in the past, including two Koreans. In the inaugural event in 2003, Grace Park rolled in a lengthy par putt on the final green to claim the title. The next year, it was Se Ri Pak who won, interestingly posting the same winning score, 9 under par, as Grace had in 2003. With that win, Se Ri at last secured the final point to qualify for the Hall of Fame (although she had to wait until this year to actually have enough years on tour to enter the Hall). Regrettably, Pak would almost immediately thereafter start a long downward spiral in her game from which she still has not entirely recovered.

Generally speaking, the course at Kingsmill, where the event takes place, has not yielded a lot of low scores. It is hilly, with tricky driving situations and even trickier greens. What really makes the course a toughie, though, are the weather conditions, specifically the wind. Added together, this par 71 course can be quite a challenge. But in 2007, the wind was virtually nonexistent for the first few days, and the players took advantage: low scores were plentiful in those rounds.

The best score of the first day was turned in by none other than Sarah Lee (pictured). She shot a blistering 8 under par 63, which tied the tournament record from 2004. Included in that score were five straight birdies on the front nine, where she shot a 6 under par 30, and nine total birdies against just one bogey. But as dialed in as Sarah was, she wasn't the only Korean to go low. Just one week after her first win of the season, Mi Hyun Kim was still on her game, and she shot a round that very nearly matched Lee's in perfection: a 7 under par 64. She was even more pristine, since her round consisted of seven birdies and no bogies. Tied for third was yet another Korean, though a far darker horse in terms of the success she has had: Birdie Kim. Birdie, of course, became famous when she won the 2005 US Women's Open with a miraculous bunker shot on the final hole. From that point, however, she had not had a lot to be happy about in her game. However, earlier in the season she finally got back on track, notching her first top ten since that win, at the Ginn Open. On this day she shot a 6 under par 66 to put herself in the hunt.

So for the first time in 2007, a leaderboard after a round featured three Korean golfers at the top. But being at the top of the leaderboard after one round, while all well and good, wouldn't really mean much if they were not able to maintain it until the end. This would be the real test for these three as the event wound on.

Meanwhile, there were some other nice surprises after day one. Grace Park, a former champion, had produced a 4 under par 67. Grace continues to try to find her former greatness, as injuries have dealt her a harsh blow since the 2005 season. Occasionally she has whipped together a great round here and there, but the real test has been, can she sustain it for more than one round? Alas, not yet: for in the second round here she would shoot ten strokes worse, a 77, and miss another cut. Jee Young Lee and Christina Kim were among those starting with a three under score. All in all, 56 players broke par on this tough course on Thursday. And the low scoring was just getting started.