SeoulSisters Awards

Most Dominating performance of the season:
Ji Yai Shin, Thai Women's Open
It's hard to pick which of Ji Yai Shin's 11 wins in 2007 was the most impressive; there are certainly a few that could be considered dominating. Heck, you could call her whole season a 'dominating performance'. But one event in particular stands out among all of them, in that the rest of the field may as well have not even shown up once she got going. That event was the Thai Women's Open. The event, which is on the Ladies Asian Golf Tour, features players from all sorts of Asian countries and even a few from Australia, America and other farther flung locales. It was contested in early March. Ji Yai got out to a great start and never looked back. In the first round she carded a blistering 5 under par 67, including an eagle on the final hole, to carve out a four shot lead. She was a bit more grumpy in round two and was only able to shoot an even par 72. However, that was still good enough for her to maintain her four shot advantage. In the final round, feeling more rested and refreshed, she systematically demolished the field, shooting a second 5 under par 67 to finished the week at 10 under par, 10 shots clear of anyone else in the tournament. In second was another Korean, Da Ye Na, who would win the league's Player of the Year award shortly thereafter. To show that the field was not without top players, tied for third were Eun Hee Ji, the KLPGA's second best player in 2007, and Rookie of the Year Ha Neul Kim. But none of that mattered to the young superstar Shin, who was never really challenged all week.

Best Victory celebration:
Mi Hyun gives $100,000 following win at SemGroup
Mi Hyun Kim's victory at the SemGroup Championship in Oklahoma was special in a number of ways. It was a course that did not exactly fit her game, especially because it was so long. The rainy conditions made it play even longer. She had to beat a tough player, Juli Inkster, in a playoff to capture the crown. And her win finally broke the jinx for the Korean golfers on the LPGA tour in 2007; it was the first Seoul Sister win of the year. But what happened after the event was so special that you still have to smile when you think about it.

A week before the event, the small town of Greensburg, Kansas, was almost completely destroyed by one of the worst tornadoes the state had ever seen. Even during the tournament a week later, stories of the tragedy were all over the news. Kimmie had already shown that she has one of the biggest hearts in golf with her amazing ability to rise above her small size to beat much larger, stronger players time and again. Now she made a gesture that showed she has a kind, caring heart as well: she donated $100,000, or nearly half the money she made by winning the SemGroup, to the victims of the tornado. When asked why, she responded that she had never been to the state (in fact she had, once for the US Women's Open, but she obviously didn't recall), and didn't know anyone there. But she felt that she had gained a lot by playing in the United States all these years, and wanted to give something back. "I was just happy that I won the tournament," she said. "The tornadoes came out of the middle of nowhere. I felt like I needed to do something for them. Winning a tournament on its own was a good thing, but I just decided to donate some money."

Perhaps even she was surprised by the positive reaction her donation got. Even the president of SemGroup, Tom Kivisto, had a hard time containing his enthusiasm. "People continue to ask SemGroup why we are involved with the LPGA," Kivisto said in a statement. "The incredible generosity of Mi Hyun Kim captures the answer." Added SemGroup Championship Tournament Director Doug Eibling: "We are very moved by Mi Hyun's generosity. She fought a hard battle for the 2007 title, but spoke more for her concern of the tornado victims than the excitement of the win."

Thank you, Mi Hyun Kim, for providing one of the most memorable moments of the year for all of us!

Honorable Mention:
Ji Yai Shin jumps in the water, Inter-Burgo Masters
Ji Yai Shin had a lot to celebrate in 2007, but even for her, this was a special moment. When she won the Inter-Burgo Masters in late October, it marked her eighth win on the KLPGA tour in 2007. To celebrate, she jumped into the water by the green. Considering how cold it can be in Korea that time of year, that was a bold thing to do! But hey, when you're happy, you're happy!

Most controversial moment:
Michelle Wie drops out of the Ginn Tribute
2007 is doubtless a year Michelle Wie is going to want to forget. On the course, she didn't have so much as a single highlight to warm the cockles of her heart. But she sure did have a lot of lowlights. It's hard to believe that the same woman who, less than a year previously, was contending for Major titles was now routinely shooting 80 or even worse. And the fact that she continued to get invited to tournaments nonetheless caused a ton of resentment to boil up.

Perhaps the very lowest point in the year came when she accepted one of those invitations to the Ginn Tribute, a new event on the LPGA schedule hosted by Annika Sorenstam. She had not played an event since missing the cut at the PGA's Sony Open in January, having skipped the Kraft Nabisco to allow her injured wrist to heal. She was upbeat about her chances, but right from the get go, things did not go well, and quickly got worse. She started on the 10th hole with a par, but on the next hole she hit her drive into the water and made bogey. On 12, she hit a tree with her drive and made double bogey. By the time she had played five holes, she was already 7 over par.

Her worst hole was the third, a par 5, where her drive hit a parked car and rolled down a drain. She managed a 10 on that hole. There was another controversy when her father, watching from outside the ropes, made comments that could be construed as giving advice to his daughter. This is, of course, illegal in golf and should prompt a two stroke penalty. Both of Wie's playing partners warned him to be careful after that.

With just a couple of holes to go, she was now 14 over par and looking at an 86 if she parred out (and making two pars was certainly no guarantee the way she was playing). At this point, a little known LPGA rule reared its ugly head. It seems that, if a player who is not a member of the LPGA is invited to play in a tournament, and she shoots an 88 or worse, she is forbidden from playing any more LPGA events for the rest of the year. It's questionable whether Wie knew about this rule or not, but with two holes to go, she was very much in danger of shooting 88 or worse. In any event, her agent approached her before she started the 8th hole and talked with her for a few minutes. Immediately after that, Wie thanked her playing partners, got into a cart and drove off, withdrawing from the tournament. Since she had withdrawn before she could shoot the 88, she would not risk her LPGA eligibility.

Needless to say, her actions produced a hailstorm of criticism from all sides. Did she know about the 88 rule, and had she purposely withdrawn to duck it? To make matters worse, another sponsor's exemption, Mackenzie Kline, had been invited to play in the event because she is a young girl golfer who suffers from a heart defect. She was not able to shoot 88, and was immediately removed from the tournament thereafter. But she had stuck with that round the whole way, even though her 88 excluded her from the rest of the tournament and all other LPGA events for 2007. The press pounced on the obvious contrast between the 'pure' motives of Kline and the 'suspect' motivations of Wie (of course, Wie does have a lot more to lose if she is excluded from LPGA events than Kline, who probably would not have gotten another sponsor's exemption in 2007, anyway).

What really sent the criticism into hyperdrive was that, less than two days later, Wie was back on the range at the next tournament, the LPGA Championship, practicing as though her injured wrist was perfectly fine. This not only called into question the legitimacy of her injury excuse, it also rubbed many LPGA players wrong in another way. LPGA golfers are not allowed to practice at a tournament site before the Monday of the event. But because Wie is not a member, she can do whatever she wants. Thus, she theoretically could gain an advantage by practicing at a given venue earlier than her opponents (in fact, a group of players also complained about her doing that very same thing at the Ginn Tribute the week before). Add onto that the fact that the LPGA Championship had never allowed a non-member to participate in that event before Wie came along, and you have a recipe for massive controversy. Even Annika Sorenstam chimed in. She was very disappointed that Wie had dropped out of the event that bore her name without so much as an apology or word to Annika. "I just feel there's a little bit of a lack of respect and class just to leave a tournament like that and then come out and practice here," Sorenstam told a news conference. "It's a little funny that you pull out with an injury and then you start grinding. My doctor told me to rest." Wie's response to that? "I don't think I need to apologize for anything." As you can imagine, that comment produced yet another round of criticism and controversy.

Michelle would continue to struggle and deal with adverse press for much of the rest of the year, but it was never quite as bad as that week in South Carolina.

Honorable Mentions:
Hee Young Park/Eun Hee Ji and the extra club
Hee Young Park is going to be the only exempt Korean rookie on the LPGA tour in 2008, and she had a very good season on the KLPGA tour in 2007 leading up to that. But one event she would probably like to forget pitted her against another KLPGA star, who had rookie status on the LPGA in 2007: Eun Hee Ji. The event was the 2nd KB Star Tour tournament. Hee Young Park and Ji were paired in the last round, and were the two leaders looking to take the title. On one early hole, Ji accidentally left one of her clubs behind after using it. Either Park or Park's caddie spotted the club, and put it into Park's bag to give to Ji at a later time. A few holes later, Ji noticed that the club was missing, then noticed that it was in Park's bag. She called a two stroke penalty on Park for having too many clubs in her bag. As it turned out, the two players wound up in a playoff, with Ji coming out on top. But had it not been for the penalty, Park would have won outright. Before you get too mad at Ji, though, remember that the rules require her to call the penalty on Park to "protect the field". It was one of those cases, however, where Park gained no advantage from having the extra club, and in fact was only trying to do a good turn for a fellow player. Still, it certainly caused a bit of controversy that the player who benefited the most from the penalty was also the one who called it.

The thrown out round at the KB Star #4 event
Christina Kim snubbed for Solheim
See above for more details on these.

Michelle Wie and the Samsung exemption
Lo and behold, Michelle Wie caused more controversy on tour in 2007 after the Ginn Tribute fiasco. The Ginn was her first event of the LPGA season, and her last event, the Samsung World Championship of Women's Golf, turned into another horror show.

It all started back near the start of the season, when Samsung decided to extend Michelle Wie a sponsor's exemption to play in this event. Now, it would probably be a good idea not to have sponsor's exemptions at all in this event. It is a special, limited field tournament where only the top players in the world of women's golf are invited to attend. There are very specific rules defining what the tournament considers to be a 'top player'. But if the people putting up the money for the tournament want to specify a player to participate who would not otherwise gain entry, it should probably be OK, provided that the player in question is at least reasonably close to being a top player as defined by the tournament rules.

The problem, of course, is that Michelle was far from a top player based on her play in the 2007 season. Now, the Samsung people made their decision to give her the exemption long before the awfulness of her 2007 season became apparent, but this naturally called into question the very notion of giving someone a sponsor's exemption so far in advance. The problem is that, since every tournament wants Wie in their field, and she can only play in a set number of events each year, she pretty much has to choose which ones to play in early in the year. If a tournament does not present her exemption to her early enough, they may miss out.

The controversy got much worse when it became apparent that Annika Sorenstam, who had won the event multiple times in the past, would not qualify for the tournament based on her own 2007 performance. A lot of that was not her fault; she was forced to miss a sizable chunk of the season due to injuries. But even when she had come back from those setbacks, she was not playing at the level she was used to. It was at this point that things started to get silly.

In response to Sorenstam's plight, Samsung decided to slightly change the eligibility requirements for the event. In years past, Samsung had used various different criteria for eligibility. For instance, there were years when the top KLPGA and top JLPGA players were invited to participate (as an aside: these exemptions were phased out a few years ago, but one could certainly argue that in the last few years, and particularly this year, those players would have been much more qualified to be in the field than the European Tour lead, Bettina Hauert. The KLPGA's top player, Ji Yai Shin, was ranked in the top ten on the Rolex rankings at the time, while the JLPGA's leader, Momoko Ueda, had already nabbed several great finishes in LPGA events in 2007, and would go on to win the LPGA's sole event in Japan to gain exempt status for 2008. Hauert, meanwhile, was not even ranked in the top 50 according to Rolex, and ended up finishing dead last at the Samsung). Anyway, Samsung decided to phase out another rarely used exemption for the US Women's Amateur champ, and replace it with a special exemption for a Hall of Famer not already qualified. Of course, the idea was to get Sorenstam into the field, but even that backfired in a major way. First of all, Sorenstam was not the highest ranked Hall of Famer on the money list who was not qualified, Karrie Webb was (and I believe Juli Inkster was also ahead of Annika at the time). Secondly, by getting into the field, Sorenstam would be costing another player (in this case, Seoul Sister Sarah Lee) a spot in the tournament. Wie, for her part, was costing the very popular Natalie Gulbis, who had won the Evian Masters earlier in the year, a place in the field.

And perhaps most embarrassing of all for Samsung, Sorenstam did not bite. Saying that she didn't want to take the spot of a worthy player while her own play had been subpar, Sorenstam refused the invitation. Poor Sarah Lee was in the field, then out of it, then in again. Sorenstam's declining the invite was applauded by the media, who then used it as a club to bash Wie for not similarly taking the high road. The controversy hit fever pitch when Wie played the event and, like most were expecting, struggled, eventually finishing second to last just barely ahead of the aforementioned Hauert, but more than a dozen shots behind the rest of the field.

Perhaps the worst aspect of the whole brouhaha was the notion that tournaments were bending over backwards, changing rules on the spur of the moment just to accommodate favored players. It cheapened the entire process of qualifying for what should be one of the premiere events on the tour. Hopefully that sort of thing will not happen too often in the future.