Office Depot 2003: Notes from El Cab

Jang notches first top ten of year
Jeong Jang has been the 6th wheel as far as the Seoul Sisters are concerned. Finishing a respectable 34th on the money list in 2002, that meant she was overshadowed not only by the Big Three (Pak, Grace and Kim) but also by Hee-Won Han, who was 14th, and Gloria Park, who was 21st. But every once in a while Jang rises to the top ranks, and this week was one of those times. She struggled on day one thanks to indifferent putting and a few too many missed greens, but played to even par on Saturday, with only 27 putts, and then trumped that with an impressive 26 putt 70 on Sunday. This gave her a 6th place finish, her first top ten of the year, and thus gave us three Koreans in the top ten at El Cab.

In fact, the Korean contingent had a good week overall. Besides the three top ten performances, four other Koreans and Korean Americans managed to work their way into the top 30: Gloria Park was 20th, Grace Park was 25th, and the two top Korean Rookies, Christina and Young Kim, also both managed 25th place finishes. In four events, Christina now has one top five and no missed cuts. Young has a top ten, a 25th and a missed cut. Coupled with the poor showing of Lorena Ochoa, they managed to make a little ground up in the Rookie of the Year race.

Archive photo of Jeong Jang in action

Grace in the bunker during round 1
AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill

Grace and Se Ri battle back
Grace and Se Ri were paired together in round 1, and both had miserable starts. But whereas Se Ri climbed out by force of will, Grace was not so lucky, finishing with a punishing 6 over 78. At the time, it looked likely she was going to miss the cut, but though Grace still had an on and off driver in round 2, she rallied spectacularly, shooting a one under 71 to jump from 110th place to 29th in just one round! From there she played another good round, going one over and moving to her final spot of 25th.

Kims Need to buy an alarm clock!
Seoul Sister aficionado San_francisco tells of a funny incident on Sunday: Grace Park and Christina Kim were teamed for that round. But with just two minutes until the tee time, Christina was nowhere in sight. Suddenly, she came bounding onto the tee box, clubs in hand. Her father was not there, though, and the starter asked her if she would be carrying her own clubs. Just then her father appeared, strapped on his bib, and Christina quickly stepped up to the tee and ripped a perfect drive down the center of the fairway. Possibly the daylight savings time change had something to do with it; but also, tee times were not set the day before, because the second round groups did not finish until that morning. Regardless, that's cutting things a bit close!