2006 McDonald's LPGA Championship:
Long Live the Queen!

The McDonald's LPGA Championship is the second Major of the LPGA season, and the second longest running event in women's golf. The list of players who have won it reads like a who's who of greats of the game. The last three years, it has been dominated by Annika Sorenstam; in 2005, she won without breaking a sweat, despite shooting over par in the final round. In 2006, she would be going for her fourth consecutive title.

But this is not the story of Annika Sorenstam, or of the McDonald's LPGA Championship, for that matter. This is the story of the last woman to win this event before Sorenstam started her streak. This is the story of the "Golf Queen", as she is known in her country. This is the story of Se Ri Pak. For despite Sorenstam's massive success at this event, no recent player's history is more intimately tied in with this tournament than Pak's. It was here she jump started her career; here she established a record for excellence that may never be beaten; and here she came to try to rejuvenate an indomitable career now on the skids. This is a tale about a brave young player - 6,000 miles away from her home and everything she has known - rising to heights no one could have expected, and a much older player trying to recapture the magic that once seemed so effortless.

Chapter One: The Rookie
When Se Ri Pak first played this event, she was a 20 year old rookie trying to make a splash on a foreign tour. She had been a superstar back in South Korea, winning 6 times in just two years, while notching seven additional second place finishes. She had frankly run out of challenges there, so she and her sponsors had decided in late 1996 on a bold new course. They would pay to send Se Ri overseas to train with the world famous golf coach David Leadbetter in his Florida academy. The goal was for Se Ri to enter the LPGA Qualifying School in the Fall of 1997 and gain an exempt card for the LPGA. The American tour was the big leagues in her sport. A few Korean golfers had had mild success playing in the States, but for the most part, they stayed home, believing they would have more success in Asia. Perhaps they believed they could not stack up against the legendary golfers like Nancy Lopez that played in America.

Se Ri Pak would change that perception completely, but it wasn't easy. She did not speak English, and was incredibly lonely and sad much of the time when she first arrived. She missed her friends, her family, the familiar comforts of home. But she persevered, winning the Qualifying School tournament late in 1997, in the process setting the record for low score achieved there. Her success was so impressive that Golf World Magazine put her on the cover, declaring 'She's 20, she's from South Korea... and she's the next Tiger Woods'. An auspicious prediction, and one that, as it turned out, would have more than a shade of truth.

As she started her rookie season, Se Ri played decently for a rookie completely out of her element, but certainly not up to the standards Golf World Magazine, and her own sponsors, had expected. As it turned out, Samsung was starting to have second thoughts about their decision to send her to America. They wondered if they wouldn't get more bang for their won by having Se Ri play in South Korea, where she was almost guaranteed to contend, if not win. Having her finish in 40th place in some American tournament, where she would get almost no television coverage, seemed like a dead end proposition. They began to suggest to her that the experiment might end soon if she were not able to produce more impressive results.

And then came the McDonald's LPGA Championship in May. It was the first Major that Se Ri was qualified to play in her rookie year. The weather was tough, the field tougher. Not many expected a twenty year old Korean rookie to make much of an impression.

But after the first day, the name that sat atop the leaderboard was hers. Longtime fans of the sport were impressed, but knew that certainly her name would not remain there. As the tournament progressed, the pressure was bound to increase. The veteran stars were used to that pressure; but it would surely destroy an untested rookie who had never before been in that situation.

But despite the pressure, despite the veterans, despite the less than ideal conditions, the determined Korean youngster maintained her position. Even when she was caught by one of her competitors, who tied her for the lead at the end of the third round, Se Ri persevered. And so it was that, as the last putt fell on Sunday, it was she who put that putt into the hole as the new champion. Improbably, the Korean rookie had won, and even more incredibly, her first win was at a Major.

She would later admit that she had no idea that the LPGA Championship was in fact a Major at the time. Perhaps that might have made a difference, perhaps not. What is clear is that, when she reached the next Major on the schedule five weeks later, she managed to win that one, too. And in that case, she had no doubt that she was winning one of the most important events on tour.

Se Ri's two wins in Majors turned her into one of the most popular players on the LPGA tour. Suddenly, even magazines like People and US News, which would normally never report on women's golf, featured stories about the bubbly new star. But if she became popular in the US, over in her native land, her success turned her into an icon. The country was going through hard times in 1998; they had been forced to participate in a financial bailout by the International Monetary Fund when they were unable to make good on loans from international institutions. Their soccer team had failed spectacularly to advance at the World Cup that year. The country needed a pick-me-up, and the plucky young girl who was taking the LPGA by storm delivered big. Se Ri became so huge that when she returned home in November, her arrival at the airport was greeted by a huge throng of press, all jockeying to get close to the legend in her own time. Her success also directly fueled the dreams of hundreds of young girls, all of whom suddenly realized that they, too, might be able to compete with the Americans after all. And if they were able to succeed, they might become as rich and famous as Se Ri. This all led to the massive influx of Korean stars onto the LPGA tour in the last few years. And it all started with Se Ri's win at the LPGA Championship.