SeoulSisters Awards

Happiest News of the Year
Hee-Won Han is going to be a mother!
She will be the first of the top Korean Seoul Sisters to have a child. The due date is next July.

Honorable Mention:
Gloria Park gets married

Best Reaction of the Year
Se Ri Pak jumps for joy in the fairway after nearly sinking her second shot, Playoff, LPGA Championship

Honorable Mentions:
Sung Ah Yim can hardly contain herself, and needs Nancy Lopez to comfort her, Florida's Natural Charity Championship
Joo Mi Kim can't stop smiling after winning the SBS Open

Best Hot Streak
Hee-Won Han, April - May
Hee-Won Han has always been a streaky player. She can go a few months without playing all that well, then all of a sudden catch fire and notch one great finish after another. Then, just as suddenly as her hot streak began, it ends again.

She had probably the best hot streak this year of any of the Korean golfers early in the year. Whereas she usually hits her stride around August, this year her big streak occurred early on.

It started back in April at the MasterCard Classic in Mexico with an 11th place finish. She barely missed the top ten the next week at the Safeway International (she finished 12th). At the next tournament, the Kraft Nabisco, she was playing well, and managed to hang on with a solid 68-71 weekend to give herself her first ever top ten in a Major, a tie for 6th. Yes, it's hard to believe that a player of her caliber had never before made a top ten in a Major, but there you go.

After a brief downturn at the Takefuji, where she finished 30th, she returned to form at her next event, the Florida's Natural Charity Championship. She didn't have a great start to her week, but in the second round shot the score of the day with an 8 under par 64 to leap up the leaderboard into third. Her third round was only a 72, and so she was not really in contention for the title (which Sung Ah Yim eventually won), but a final round 69 gave her her first top five finish of the year, a tie for fifth.

The next tournament, she again finished tied for fifth. It was the Ginn Clubs and Resorts Open. This time, it seemed as though she was headed for a poor finish, but she rallied in the final round with a closing 66 to grab the top finish. She earned a tidy $78,000 for her efforts thanks largely to that burst on Sunday. The next time she teed it up was at another big money event, the Michelob Ultra, and once again she got the job done. Unfortunately, Karrie Webb absolutely ran away with the title, winning by seven shots, but Hee-Won tied Lorena Ochoa for second at 7 under par.

Hee-Won was not done yet. She finished tied for second at her next event as well, the Sybase Classic, an event she has always done well at. Then came the Corning Classic. She played fantastically there as well, but it looked like Meena Lee had the title locked up until Hee-Won made a run at the end. She made two birdies on the final two holes to catch Lee, then beat her in a playoff (which was voted our Best Playoff of the Year). Hee-Won thus had five straight top five finishes, plus her first top ten in a Major at the Nabisco. Right after her win, however, she fell off form, and did not really contend again until she collected her second win in Thailand many months later.

Honorable Mention:
Jee Young Lee, August
Jee Young ran off three great tournaments in a row in August. She started with a fifth place finish at the Canadian Open. At her next event, the Safeway Classic, she led after the first round thanks to her blistering opening round 64, which included seven birdies in a row (she won our award for Best Stretch of Holes). She faltered after that, though, and finished tied for fifth again. At her next event, the Wendy's Championship, she again led after two rounds. Lorena Ochoa took the lead after three, but Lee fought back into a tie with Ochoa before the Mexican star finally put her away in the last few holes on Sunday. Jee Young collected a second place finish, her third straight top five.

Weirdest Moment
Kyeong Bae, Florida's Natural Championship
Kyeong Bae was playing quite well at this tournament in Atlanta; after three rounds, she found herself with a shot at a top ten. However, she thought the tournament was over, as the last few events had been three rounds long, and she and her father drove home to Florida. When they got there, they called the LPGA to find out how much money she had won, only to discover that there was still one more round to play! They hopped back in their car, drove all the way back to Atlanta, and got there in time for her tee time on Sunday. Amazingly, she shot a final round 68, which elevated her to a 13th place finish, her best of the season to that point! It was definitely a good thing she found out about the situation in time!

Most Touching Moment
Jeong Jang gives money to Korean War Vets
There was a very touching incident that happened after JJ won the Wegman's Rochester tournament in June. Her father was approached by a local Korean American who handed him a small American flag. She explained that it had been given to her by an American veteran of the Korean War. They were memorializing the anniversary of the start of the Korean War at a nearby park, and the woman, whose name is Byoung Baek, asked Mr. Jang if he and JJ would be so kind as to stop by and pay respects. Mr. Jang, well aware of the sacrifice Americans had made in the Korean War to help safeguard South Korea's freedom, enthusiastically agreed.

As soon as Jeong was done with her post tournament duties, she and her parents journeyed to the Korean War memorial to pay their respects. There they met several veterans, including Joe Vogel, who is the chaplain for the state's Korean War veterans. Vogel choked back tears at the gesture, saying he felt 'overwhelmed'. "She and her family could have been celebrating her victory in some fancy restaurant. Instead they took time to pay their respects. They couldn't have been more gracious," he said later.

After they took time to pray, JJ greeted the veterans, hugged the tearful Vogel and offered the local veteran's organization a check for $1,000. "I wish that our young people had the same appreciation that she does," the tearful Vogel later said. What a wonderful gesture indeed from a champion who once again proves that, though she may be small in stature, she is huge in heart.

Honorable Mentions:
Se Ri chokes up talking about her parents, LPGA Championship
Seon Hwa Lee gives her Rookie of the Year acceptance speech in English

Best Champagne Bath of the Year
Joo Mi Kim, SBS Open (as performed by Christina Kim and Jeong Jang)
Christina really soaked Joo Mi at this one; Joo Mi barely had time to react before she got a faceful of bubbles. Those first timers don't tend to be as quick on their feet.

Diplomacy Award
Jeong Jang gives money to Korean War Veterans group, Wegman's Rochester

Rookie to Watch in 2007
This is a regular feature of our year end discussion, as we look ahead to name a rookie for the next season that we think you might want to keep an eye on. In the 2005 season, we recommended watching Meena Lee, whom we thought had the potential to be the breakout star of the Korean rookie class. We got that one right; Lee wound up finishing seventh on the money list with a victory at the Canadian Women's Open. Last year, we had this to say about the incoming class of 2006:

"At the risk of ruining our perfect prediction record, we are going to make another bold prediction about the Korean rookie to watch in 2006. That player is Kyeong Bae."

Oops.

In our defense, Bae did have a solid season, and was the third best Korean rookie on tour after Seon Hwa Lee and Jee Young Lee. We also emphasized that Seon Hwa had a great record and was going to be a strong rookie herself, but that we had a hunch Bae was going to be the better rookie in the end. Sorry about any curse we might have laid on your shoulders, Ms. Bae!

This year, the incoming class of 2007 is probably the most impressive group of potential Korean stars in the history of the tour. Those who don't like to see Koreans contending for tournaments are probably going to have a tough time in 2007. Arguably seven of the incoming Koreans and ladies of Korean descent have a reasonable shot at Rookie of the Year: Song Hee Kim, In-Bee Park, Jin Joo Hong, Angela Park, Jane Park, In Kyung Kim and Ji Young Oh all have the right combination of talent, hunger, and exempt cards or high conditional status to get the job done. The favorite among those seven would have to be Song Hee Kim, of course. Her record on the Futures Tour last year was so impressive that she almost seems (dare we say it?) a sure bet for success. We're not thinking about picking one of the others to surpass Kim in 2007.

But rather than go with the obvious, instead we'll choose a lady who we think will have a lot of success in 2007 without getting a lot of pre-season hype. She might not win Rookie of the Year, but we predict that Ji Young Oh is going to make some definite noise next year. Oh is the most intriguing of the seven rookies we named, in part because she is the biggest X Factor. She has played in this country for about a year and won every tournament she entered, six in total. Her victory margin at those events averaged seven and a half strokes. In the three qualifying events she played, she finished in the top ten in all three (in the top three in the first two). What makes her a mystery is that she did not play a lot of events containing the big names in amateur or professional golf. The six events she won were second tier events which had some but not a lot of the top golfers in the country in them. But at the qualifying events, she beat some of the top college golfers in the country, and outshone several promising pros as well. And she has flat out stated that her goal is to win the Rookie of the Year; the only other Korean rookies who have publicly announced that are Song Hee Kim and In-Kyung Kim, who is arguably the second best bet to do so behind Song Hee Kim..

So, is Ji Young Oh really as good as she seems? Is she, at 18 years old, ready to challenge the top golfers in the world on a regular basis? Can she contend for the Rookie of the Year? Whatever the final Rookie of the Year standings end up being, we're betting that you'll be hearing her name in the news in 2007.