Oops! She Did It Again!

Grace Park just keeps getting better and better. It's hard to remember back a few years ago, when it seemed like the Amateur golf superstar was greatly underachieving in the professional realm. That all changed in 2002, when Grace achieved her first top ten finish on the LPGA money list in her third year on tour. She had 12 top tens that year, and scored under a 71 stroke average for the first time in her career. All very impressive stats, but she improved those markedly in 2003. Last year, she moved up to third on the money list, with an incredible 19 top tens and a stroke average of 70.11, good for third in the league. As impressive as all these stats were, however, one interesting situation stood out: despite the numerous top tens, the great scoring, and leading the league in birdies two years running, Grace was still only able to manage one win in each of her first four years. Somehow, she still was not grabbing the five wins / year that she hoped for at the start of 2003. Not that she didn't have her chances; she just wasn't able, for whatever reason, to capitalize on those chances.

Grace Park keeps getting better and better

Se Ri had twelve top three finishes in 2001 and five
wins, including the British Women's Open

Grace had another near miss at last week's
Asahi Ryokuken tournament

In 2004, Grace has in some ways improved yet again. While she will doubtless not get 19 top tens this year, she had nonetheless notched (before the Samsung) a very impressive 9 top ten finishes. Her scoring average was again hovering around the very low 70s, but if you removed the four or five events she played while suffering from back problems, her average was more like 69 flat. As if that weren't enough, every one of those nine top tens was a top three. Grace has been putting herself in contention more than ever before.

And yet still, as of the Samsung, Grace only had one win on the 2004 season. One win, and five second place finishes. What was up? Why hasn't Grace gotten the job done more often? What is still holding her back?

Perhaps comparing Grace with Se Ri Pak would be instructive. In 2001, the season where Se Ri rose to the #2 spot in women's golf (and very possibly could have been #1, but for a few bad breaks; this was before Annika had really solidified her standing at that spot), Se Ri had 12 top tens. Every one of those top tens were top threes, just like Grace this year. But five of those top threes were wins, compared to just one win for Grace. Clearly, Grace still has something to learn in terms of getting the job done when it counts.

Every year, the Samsung World Championship is a chance for the top women in the game to get together and duke it out for the prize. This year, the event was held at the Big Horn Golf Club. This was good karma for Grace, who had already shown that she plays well in the desert (her one win in 2004 came at Rancho Mirage, only 15 minutes away from Big Horn). However, it was also a stroke of good luck for Annika Sorenstam, who was a member at Big Horn and had doubtless played the course many times. Coming into this week, Grace had yet another near miss at the Asahi Ryokuken, and finally admitted to the press that she was tired of being a runner up. She was ready to win. But would she be able to beat not only Sorenstam, but 19 of the best women golfers around?

Included in that group of 20 golfers was a record 6 Korean players and two more of Korean-American persuasion. Only one of those 8 players was given an exemption, 15 year old prodigy Michelle Wie. Every other one of them had earned her way in. This is perhaps the greatest testimonial to the power of the Korean movement going on right now in women's golf. By contrast, there were only five Americans in the field, two of whom were Korean-American.

Owing to the way players had qualified for the event, Grace Park, winner of the first Major of 2004 and thus the second player to make it into the field, would be teamed with the winner of 2003's Vare Trophy. That was, of course, Se Ri Pak. Se Ri had taken an unheard of six weeks off from tournament golf in order to address the various ills that had stricken her game since she had qualified for the LPGA Hall of Fame back in May. Although she looked good in practice, there was no way to know how she would do in actual tournament conditions. Playing with her good friend Grace would doubtless be a comforting thing for the struggling superstar.

And so round one got underway, and Grace Park got off to a fairly solid start. By the turn, she had moved to four under par and was not far off of the lead. In fact, most of the players in the field were not far off the lead; it seemed as though everyone was shooting four or five under par this day. Everyone, that is, except Se Ri, who immediately began to struggle with her driver, knocking the ball into the desert on several of her first holes. In no time flat she was at 3 over par and in last place. The tournament would end up being a dismal affair for her, arguably the worst she has ever perpetrated. We'll talk a bit more about Se Ri's woes later.

Se Ri Pak seemed ready to play
before the event...

Grace had a great opening round

Grace coaxes one more putt into the hole on
the 18th hole during round 1

A word about the Big Horn course. The fairways are by and large generous, which certainly played to the strengths of Grace, a notoriously hit and miss driver. But if you missed the fairways, watch out: beyond them lurked desert, and almost certain trouble. Grace hit an unusual number of fairways throughout the week, but as she would find out, those few she really missed would prove a major challenge in her bid for the win. But more on that later!

By the par 5 12th, Grace had put together a nice round thus far. But starting from this point, she really kicked it into fifth gear. Her approach on 12 was magnificent, and ended up nearly rolling in for a double eagle. She tapped in for eagle, and didn't look back after that. She kept hitting fairways, and kept pasting her ball very close to the flag. She added another birdie on 14, but surprisingly was not able to birdie the par 5 15th (she was close, though). She wasn't very close on 16, but it hardly mattered as she snaked in a 15 footer for yet another birdie, then buried an 8 footer on 17 to move to 9 under and a one shot lead. And that was despite a bogey on 6.

But the 18th hole proved to be a different kettle of fish. She hit another fine drive, but her second shot was not very good, and ended up over the green. From there, a two putt would seem to be a challenge. But showing just how dialed in she was, she negotiated the 20 footer in for her ninth birdie of the day. For the first time in her career, Grace had shot a ten under par round, and had a two stroke lead over Catriona Matthew (this is not her best score, however; earlier this year, she shot a 61 on the par 70 course in Tucson). Interestingly, after never having led a tournament after round one all season, Grace had now managed this feat in the last two events she had played. When Christina Kim started doing that regularly, her first win was not too far behind. Could Grace get her second?