2005 Samsung World Championship

The Samsung World Championship is the most elite field event in women's golf. The tournament is limited every year to just twenty golfers. Those that get in automatically include the winners of the four Majors, and the previous year's Player of the Year and Vare Trophy winner. Samsung is allowed to pick one exemption, and the top European tour player is also invited to participate. After that, the field is filled out with those atop the LPGA money list. In the past, they used to also give an exemption to the best player on the KLPGA and JLPGA tours, but for some reason, they have stopped doing that recently.

The players who got into the field thanks to winning Majors (Annika Sorenstam, Jeong Jang and Birdie Kim) all would have made it into the field anyway due to their money list positions. But the Vare trophy winner, Grace Park, would not have been so lucky. Since she was only 38th on the money list when the deadline for entry passed, she would not have made it based on her performance in 2005. Another Korean missing her first ever Samsung was former Samsung sponsoree Se Ri Pak, who had even won the event in 1999. She was not even in the top 100 on the money list when the field was finalized, but could have still gotten in as a sponsor's exemption. But the question was moot, since she was injured and unable to play regardless (and it's probably just as well, considering that, when she played the event in 2004 on the same course, she had had arguably the worst performance of her career, finishing 15 shots behind any other player in the field. Of course, since then she had bought a house on the course, so it would have been interesting to see how she would have fared now that she lived part time where the event occurred). The sponsor's exemption, not surprisingly, went to Michelle Wie; it marked the final LPGA tour exemption of the year for the teen prodigy.

The other Koreans who made the field were Meena Lee and Gloria Park, both due to their money list positions. But another player, higher ranked than either of them when the event started, was not able to get into the field: Hee-Won Han. Hee-Won had had the unfortunate luck to move into the top ten on the money list only after the field for the Samsung had already been set.

Michelle Wie drew most of the attention at the Samsung.
It was her first tournament as a pro.

Grace Park got into the field by virtue
of her Vare Trophy win

The event has been contested the last two years at the Big Horn Golf club in southern California (marking the third straight event in that state on tour this month, following the Office Depot in LA (which Hee-Won had won) and the Long Drugs Challenge in Sacramento). Although Se Ri had suffered horribly in 2004 on this course, another Korean had played wonderfully: Grace Park. Indeed, she shot a 10 under par 62 in the first round, and seemed firmly in control throughout most of the event. She loved the course, which has wide fairways that forgave her sometimes errant drives. She commented then that she felt like she could birdie every hole. But at the end of the event, she got a little loose, made a few mistakes, and Annika Sorenstam, who managed to hole out an eagle on the final par 5, snuck past her and claimed the trophy. Grace was very upset, but fortunately for her she won shortly thereafter in Korea at the CJ 9 Bridges.

But it wasn't Se Ri Pak's absence, or Grace Park's try at redemption, or Annika's defense, that was responsible for the vast increase in press attention to this year's Samsung. No, it was the professional debut of the teen talent Michelle Wie that had this event in the spotlight, even to the point of having CNN mention her daily progress (and no one else's) on its scrolling ticker tape. Wie had turned pro just in time for her 16th birthday, and immediately became the richest golfer in the women's game with endorsements from Nike and Sony, among others, said to be worth in excess of ten million dollars. Not for nothing was she featured on the cover of Fortune magazine that selfsame month. Would Wie be able to live up to that hype by winning an elite field event against 19 of the best women golfers in the game?

Grace played very well in 2004, and
probably should have won

The course yielded a lot of birdies on its first day, and several of the Korean gals cashed in. Gloria Park got out to a great start. Playing in the first group of the day, she carded a 7 under par 65, then sat back to watch if anyone could catch her. Meena Lee and Jeong Jang did all right with 3 under par rounds, while Birdie Kim idled at even par. The big surprised was Grace Park. Struggling like mad all season, Grace had had another piece of her typical luck in the pro-am. She high fived one of her pro-am partners, and in the process, injured her shoulder. There was a silver lining, though, in that this forced her to take it easy during the practice rounds, and thus she was perhaps fresher playing her first round than she might have otherwise been. She carded a 5 under par 67, including several fantastic approaches for short birdies. Grace was on fire.

Michelle Wie, meanwhile, started with a 2 under par round, not too bad. The leader after day one, though, was no surprise: the defending champ Annika Sorenstam carded an 8 under par 64 and put herself into the final group on Friday. Once again, it looked like the rest of the field would be playing catch up with her.

Gloria in round 1

Grace had one of her best rounds of
the year on Friday

Grace continued the great play in round 2. More solid drives, good putting, and fantastic iron play. She had at least two irons on the back nine she hit to within a foot or two for tap in birdies. She caught Sorenstam at 11 under for the lead. Later, Sorenstam would have a rules brouhaha when she hit her ball into the desert and did not get what she considered proper relief from a scoreboard. She wound up bogeying the final hole, and Grace finished the day with a two shot lead. JJ and Gloria were four shots back at 7 under. Michelle Wie, meanwhile, had shot the round of the day, a 7 under par 65, to take a share of second, and would play in the final group with Grace on Saturday. Grace was in for it now: exposure to the full media glare of the Wie hype. But Grace had been around long enough that it probably would not be a problem.

Grace didn't get off to a great start on Saturday, with a birdie and a bogey in her first few holes. Wie also struggled, and as a result, their group started to fall behind, which put more pressure on them to play quickly. This would end up costing Wie immensely when she did an illegal drop on the 7th hole to free herself from an unplayable lie. She had dropped her ball closer to the hole than its original lie, and a reporter nearby saw this. He wouldn't bring it to the attention of the officials until Sunday. By then, the only course of action would be to disqualify Wie, as she had already signed an incorrect scorecard by that time. So as it turned out, Wie made no money in her pro debut after all, not because she missed the cut, but because of this rules infraction (in fact, she would have finished 4th).