Lexus Cup

For about a decade, the Solheim Cup was the only major international team event in women's golf. That tournament pits a team from the United States, recruited from the LPGA, against a team from Europe, comprising top players from the Ladies European Tour and Captain's choices from the LPGA. Over time, the rivalry between these two teams has become intense, and many memorable battles have occurred.

But at the same time, the biggest development in women's golf has been the growing strength of golfers from places other than Europe and the US, particularly Asia. Just last year alone, the top two spots on the LPGA money list were occupied by players from Mexico and Australia, and sixteen of the top thirty were players who would not be allowed to play in the Solheim Cup. The Rolex World Rankings presented an even more extreme situation. As of this writing, thirteen of the top twenty in the world were from non-Solheim nations. Clearly, there was plenty of incentive to include these great golfers somehow in team play.

The problem was that the Solheim family, who had the right to decide the format for the Cup, has consistently resisted any attempt to include anyone other than the teams who were originally in the event. The door was open for someone to create a new event, and that's exactly what happened. A group of folks created a new event intended to involve all the top golfers in the world who wanted to play. They secured a big money sponsor, Lexus, then convinced two of the top golfers in the world, Annika Sorenstam and Grace Park, to act as captains. The Lexus Cup was born.

The biggest problem with the event was coming up with the teams. The solution they came up with is far from perfect. They decided the two teams would be golfers from Asia, and golfers from… everywhere else in the world. Now, no doubt the Asian golfers have done amazing things in the last ten years, but would they really be able to field a team that could beat that of the entire rest of the world combined? The world rankings suggest not, and if the event is going to grow, it will probably need to tweak the team setup.

But just because the top potential team from both sides might heavily favor the International squad, doesn't mean that a great matchup can't be constructed between the two groups. There are certainly enough great players on both sides to insure that. But in 2005, despite the efforts of the organizers to create balanced teams, the event quickly turned into a rout. On each day, the International Squad scored twice as many points as the Asian one.

In 2006, Grace Park, who captained the team in 2005, was again invited to be the captain, despite the large yearlong slump she had been caught up in. She was determined to win the cup this time, and was encouraged by the new team selection criteria, which gave her better weapons to use in her quest. Nonetheless, it seemed unlikely, judging by the way the Internationals had destroyed Asia in 2005, that an Asian team could be selected that could go against the likes of Annika Sorenstam, Paula Creamer and Natalie Gulbis and even contend, let alone come out on top. But Grace had faith that the right Asian team could in fact win.

Not surprisingly, she wound up with a team composed mostly of Korean golf stars. Jeong Jang and Mi Hyun Kim took a pass, and Gloria Park was preparing for her wedding, which was taking place the weekend of the Cup. But Lexus was able to entice many of the other top Koreans in the world to play. Chief among them was the most successful Asian golfer in history, Se Ri Pak, who was having a comeback season in 2006 with her first Major win since 2002. Even more than that, though, Se Ri is one of the great winners in the game of golf, and having her on the team was bound to be a big lift to the players. Also joining the squad was Seon Hwa Lee, the LPGA's Rookie of the Year; Hee-Won Han, who won twice in 2006; Meena Lee, who won her second career event this year; and Joo Mi Kim, who won her first event in 2006. Top thirty golfers Jee Young Lee, Shi Hyun Ahn and Young Kim completed the group. This was top to bottom a great group of golfers, with nary a weak link among them. Indeed, the weakest of these nine golfers was probably Grace herself, who needed the sponsor's permission to even play in the event, since she didn't qualify based on her world ranking. But though Grace had been inconsistent in 2006, you knew she would be fighting hard to make up for it in this, her final event of the year. Added to the nine Korean golfers were Taiwanese star Candie Kung, promising Japanese star Sakura Yokomine, and two time LPGA winner from the Philippines, Jennifer Rosales. Rosales, like Grace, has struggled quite a bit in 2006, but the other two ladies had been great, so the Asian Squad looked ready for action.

The International team, again captained by world number one Annika Sorenstam, had top American stars like Paula Creamer and Natalie Gulbis, as well as HSBC Matchplay champion Brittany Lincicome, Solheim stalwarts Carin Koch and Laura Davies, British Open winner Sherri Steinhauer, American teen rookie star Morgan Pressel, LPGA tour winner Stacy Prammanasudh, and ADT Champion Julieta Granada. The Internationals didn't have the strongest team they could have fielded, as Karrie Webb, Lorena Ochoa and Cristie Kerr were absent (not to mention Pat Hurst and Juli Inkster, to name two others), but it was still an excellent squad that looked good to retain the cup for their side.

The event was contested, as in 2005, in Singapore at the Tanah Merah Country Club. The Cup is a three day event consisting of two days of team events and one day of singles matches. All matches are match play rules. The dates for the event were December 15- 17th. This time of year, the temperatures in Singapore soar into the high nineties or even hotter, and for much of the weekend, the women on both teams would struggle with extreme heat and other tricky weather conditions. Fortunately, they rose to the occasion, and this year, unlike in 2005, the event was competitive the whole weekend.
On the first day, the teams played six alternate shot foursome matches. This is perhaps the trickiest format to get used to if you don't have much of a chance to play it. Asian golfers very rarely if ever had any chance to play this format, but they gained some experience in last year's Lexus Cup. This year, they showed they were good learners, as they were quite competitive in this style of play with the Internationals.

The Asians got out to a fantastic start. The first team paired Young Kim and Seon Hwa Lee (pictured above). One wouldn't think they would be the strongest team the Asians could field, but by the end of the week, they would prove to be the two best players on the squad. On this day, they matched up against Laura Davies and Brittany Lincicome. On paper, this looked like it would be a pretty tough battle. Both Davies and Lincicome are very long hitters. Davies has tons of experience playing team matches for the European Solheim Cup, while Lincicome won the World Match Play title in 2006. The International squad took the lead early with a birdie, but then made bogey-bogey-double bogey-double bogey to quickly fall three down to their Asian opponents. Kim and Lee just absolutely dominated this match after that, winning 6 & 5 and drawing first blood for Asia.

Although things were going well in that match, in the other five matches, the Internationals were having their way. This had an unfortunate resemblance to what had happened in 2005. Back then, the Internationals seized momentum on day one and never gave the Asians a chance to get back into it. Grace knew her team had to prevent that from happening again.

The second match proved to be a much more hotly contested affair. It featured Meena Lee and Jee Young Lee against two American young guns, Paula Creamer and Natalie Gulbis. Meena Lee, a two time LPGA winner, is known for her accuracy and level head, while rookie Jee Young is a long bomber who tends to play a little more aggressively. Together they made for a great team with perfect chemistry. The Americans played well at first and by the turn had carved out a four hole lead. But then the momentum changed in a huge way. The two Lees combined to win four of the next six holes and draw even. Continuing to feed off their momentum, they won two of the next three holes to close out the match.

The third match had captain Grace Park teaming with her good friend Shi Hyun Ahn (pictured above) against Stacy Prammanasudh and Angela Stanford. It was a good signfor team Asia that Grace played pretty well on this day, despite her recent golfing woes. The match wound up in a draw. The Asians had climbed to a 2 ½ point - ½ point lead, with some strong Korean golfers yet to play.