2007 HSBC Women's World Match Play:
Matchless

Match play is a very different way to play a golf tournament. In a normal golf tournament, you can often get away with a slow start, provided that you pick it up at the right time. Not so in match play, where at any time you may face someone on a roll that can eliminate you from the event. Depending on how your draw goes, you could play one tough opponent after another, or have a relatively easy time of it. Sometimes you can play brilliantly and still lose, or play awfully and still win. Not surprisingly, match play tournaments often see a lot of upsets as the event progresses. Television tends not to like match play because of this; it's simply too likely that your final four will contain mostly, or even all, relatively unknown players, and unlike a regular event, you will be stuck showing those players if that happens.

After a few years without any match play event on the LPGA schedule, HSBC stepped forward in 2005 to sponsor one. They made it very enticing by offering a fantastic purse, with the final four all guaranteed six figure payoffs; the top prize was a cool half a million dollars, one of the largest prizes in all of women's golf. The tournament invited 62 of the top women golfers in the world to participate, as well as two sponsor's exemptions. Each round, half the field would be eliminated until only four golfers remained. On the final day, two semifinals took place; the winners would go on to face each other for the championship, while the losers met in a consolation match. The huge purse enticed almost all of the top woman golfers in the world to the event, which meant that the possible matchups could be very interesting indeed.

But in the first two years of the event, upsets were the order of the day. The final group in the inaugural tournament consisted of Marisa Baena, who was one of the lowest ranked players in the field, and Meena Lee, a Korean rookie who would end up finishing the year in the top ten on the money list. Lee had been the only Korean to even make it into the quarterfinals, and she came very close to winning the whole thing, losing to Baena on the final hole. She would win her first event at the Canadian Women's Open shortly thereafter. In 2006, the Koreans once again did not make it very far, only this time not a single Seoul Sister made it into the final four. The winner ended up being 39th ranked Brittany Lincicome, who beat Michelle Wie, Lorena Ochoa and Juli Inkster along the way.

In 2007, the field for the HSBC match play had more Koreans and women of Korean heritage than ever before, twenty one in total. That meant that nearly one third of the field at the start of the week had Korean blood, a truly amazing fact. Most of these ladies came from the LPGA. There were the top players, like Se Ri Pak, Mi Hyun Kim, and Jeong Jang; star second year players like Seon Hwa Lee, Kyeong Bae and Jee Young Lee; and great rookie stars like Angela Park, Na On Min, In-Kyung Kim and In-Bee Park. Young Kim, who had had her first win earlier this year, was also playing; she had been undefeated at the 2006 Lexus Cup (as had Seon Hwa Lee), and so was definitely someone to watch as play commenced. Meena Lee, who had done so well at this event in 2005, would be playing again, as would 2004 Rookie of the Year Shi Hyun Ahn. Sarah Lee had been having a great year on tour, but had not yet been able to win; would this format allow her to break through? Then there was Ji Yai Shin, who had been so impressive all year on the KLPGA tour. She was coming off her top ten finish at the US Women's Open, which had come after three consecutive wins on the KLPGA. Add onto this several other Koreans like Jimin Kang, Il Mi Chung, Birdie Kim, and Korean American Christina Kim, and the chances for a Korean to at least make the final four, and maybe even win, had never been better.

Unfortunately, even with all those great golfers in the field, there were a few Korean stars who did not make it into the event. The most jarring absence was Grace Park. Grace had been a superstar back in her amateur days, and had won several important match play tournaments, including the biggest of them all, the US Women's Amateur. She had also won a match play event on the LPGA tour, the only Korean to have ever done that, when she won the 2002 Cisco World Ladies Match Play in Japan (she is seen above with her trophy from that event). But Grace has struggled mightily since 2005, and was amazingly not even in the top 64 players in the world by this time. Also missing was Soo-Yun Kang, a winner on the LPGA tour in 2005 who had also fallen on hard times in the past year and a half, and Hee-Won Han, who was on maternity leave. Then there was Michelle Wie, the Korean American player who had at one time been #2 in the world according to the Rolex rankings, the highest ranking a Korean player has ever attained. She had sunk too low by this time to qualify for the event, but not surprisingly, HSBC had offered her a sponsor's exemption. She turned it down, however, choosing instead to focus on the Evian Masters and the Women's British Open, the next two events on the tour.

So who looked good to go far as the event began? Seon Hwa Lee and Young Kim were two good bets; as mentioned before, both had been undefeated in three match play matches at the Lexus Cup. Lee had even won the pivotal match, against Julieta Granada, that had won the event for Asia. Meena Lee, obviously, showed she can play match play in 2005, although she was having her worst season in 2007 since joining the tour. Se Ri Pak had just won the previous week at the Farr Classic, and was obviously playing very well, and Mi Hyun Kim had been playing brilliantly all year. Jee Young and Sarah Lee both were having great years, and Ji Yai Shin had scarcely played a single event since turning pro where she did not finish near the top of the leaderboard. Among the rookies, Angela Park, In-Bee Park and In-Kyung Kim had all won important amateur match play events in their careers; In-Bee in particular had excelled at this format, having won the US Girls' Junior one year and finishing second two other years. That's a pretty impressive group of players with a good chance at this event.

In the first round, there were several intriguing matchups, but without a doubt the most tantalizing one was Birdie Kim vs. Morgan Pressel. Birdie (pictured) had stunned the world when she won the US Women's Open in 2005 by holing out a bunker shot on the final hole. Standing in the fairway of that hole at that moment was Pressel who, until that moment, had a great chance to possibly win the event herself. Many people have unfairly claimed that Kim had 'stolen' the event from Pressel, ignoring how brilliantly Kim had had to play the previous 71 holes to even put herself in position to win. Since that time, Pressel had played far better in general than Birdie had, and now Pressel had a second chance to take on Birdie and perhaps 'get even' with her. But to Birdie's credit, she didn't back down for a minute. After a pitched battle on the front nine, Birdie took the lead on the back nine and wouldn't let go. Pressel did square the match on the fifteenth hole, but Birdie won the 17th and 18th to claim the match 2 up. Pressel hit her club on the ground in disgust as she walked off one hole; it was probably a bit difficult for her to take losing to Kim a second time.