At the first two events in 2003, Soo Yun showed she could play. She immediately shattered her best LPGA score by shooting a 65 in her first round of the Welch's Fry's Championship, and followed that up with a 66. But then she cooled down as the conditions got tougher, and she wound up with a tie for 30th, her best finish as an LPGA player. In her next event, the Ping, she again went out strong, carding a 68, and looked for all the world ready to make a statement. But she completely fell apart in the second round, shooting a 77 and missing the cut. Live and learn.

The Office Depot was not a fantastic performance by her either. On the difficult El Cabellero layout, she did make the cut, but struggled to a 61st place finish. So flashes of brilliance were showing up, but they were tempered by struggles. Still, remembering how other Korean stars had started slowly, she must not have been too terribly disappointed.

Then came her fourth event of the season, the Takefuji Classic. This event had been newly moved from Hawaii to Las Vegas. The course was playing shorter than its announced length, mainly thanks to some fairways that had an incredible amount of run on them. Low scores might be expected, except that the greens at this course would prove more challenging than they at first appeared. Even bonified superstars would be bedeviled by them.

Soo Yun at the Welch's, 2003

Kangsy drives in rd 1
Reuters/Jeff Topping

Soo Yun again started out with a great round, a three under par 69. This was good enough to put her into a tie for 8th place with none other than Seoul Sister Se Ri Pak. Everything about the round was solid for her. She hit 14 of 18 greens, and 10 of 14 fairways. Her driving was only 257.5 yards, a bit short on these fast fairways, but certainly not that bad. She managed 29 putts as well. And best of all, she walked away with five birdies against only two bogies. But Soo Yun had shot good rounds already this year, only to fail to follow them up. The real test was, could she continue to play at this high level, or would she again slide down the leaderboard?

Soo Yun answered that resoundingly. Friday's conditions were noticeably worse, including some rather poor weather that would lead eventually to a delay of play owing to lightning. Soo Yun had an afternoon tee time and got caught up in all that. But though her putting was definitely off, the rest of her game was still firing on all cylinders. She would again hit 14 greens, but this time missed only a single fairway all day. Her driving had noticeably improved; she even smashed a 289 yarder on the front nine!

She started with a birdie on hole 10, followed with a bogey on 11, then parred the rest of her front nine. On the back she added two more birdies to shoot a 70 and move into 6th place, again tied with Se Ri. She not only had made the cut, but for the first time was in the top ten going into the final round. And her standing meant that she would be paired with none other than Annika Sorenstam in the last round. Talk about a test!

When you see the name Se Ri Pak or the name Annika Sorenstam sitting a few shots out of the lead going into the last round, you naturally expect one of them to make a move to win. But both superstars were vexed by the greens, which did not seem tricky yet caused an inordinate amount of missed short putts. Kangsy, meanwhile, might seem like an afterthought at best. But she had shown in Korea that she could get the job done when in a similar position. In fact, she had done so against Annika, paired with her in the final round of the 2000 Korean Open. But Annika may have been one of the few in the field who was aware of what Soo Yun was capable of.

Soo Yun lets it rip