The Quiet Korean

Hee-Won Han is one of the most popular of the Korean golfers in her home country. Her great talent, which has enabled her to finish in the top ten on the LPGA money list the past few seasons, is doubtless a big reason. But another is her marriage to a popular former baseball pitcher named Son Hyuk. Theirs is one of the few relationships like it in Korea, and news stories about Hee-Won's exploits often take time to describe the way Sonny supports his gifted wife.

But in the States, Hee-Won is without a doubt the secret weapon of the Seoul Sisters' posse. Despite her impressive successes, she is given little attention here. But if Hee-Won is bothered by that, she doesn't show it. Instead, she just keeps working hard, making money and excelling at the sport she loves.

Hee-Won has been a strong golfer pretty much from the beginning. She won over 40 tournaments as an amateur. Perhaps the highlight of those days was when she competed in the 1996 World Amateur Championship… and won! At one point, she was a member of the Korean National team, where one of her teammates was none other than Se Ri Pak. She turned pro in 1998, and joined the Japanese LPGA tour, where she played so well she won the Rookie of the Year award that year. After a few years in Japan, she decided to join her old friends Se Ri and Grace Park on the American LPGA tour. However, she was not able to gain an exempt card at the 2000 LPGA Q-School. Undaunted, she played the tour in 2001 as a non-exempt player, which often required her to play in Monday qualifiers to get into tournament fields. She succeeded in qualifying an impressive 7 of 11 times that way, and wound up winning the Rookie of the Year that year. She thus became one of the few players to ever win that award on two different tours.

In 2002, Hee-Won broke through in a major way. Up until that year, there were three Korean stars on the LPGA: Se Ri Pak, Mi Hyun Kim and Grace Park. But in 2002, Hee-Won made a run at joining them by finishing second three times to end up 14th on the money list. The next season, she finally broke into the winner's circle; in fact, she won twice, notched more than a million dollars in earnings, and finished 4th on the money list. From that point until the present, she has remained one of the most consistently successful golfers on the planet.

In 2006, Hee-Won has continued her success. After a couple of OK tournaments in Hawaii to start the year, she raised her game a notch, just missing top tens in her next two events. But it was at the year's first Major, the Kraft Nabisco Championship, where Hee-Won at last achieved a milestone in her career. Despite her great success, she had amazingly never finished in the top ten at a Major. It didn't look like she was going to end that streak at the Nabisco, especially after a weak start left her several shots over par going into the final two days. But she rallied wonderfully with an impressive 68-71 weekend to finish 6th for the tournament.

That finish really lit a fire under Han. From that time on, she has been getting gradually stronger and stronger. She had a slight hiccup at her next event, the Takefuji Classic, where her 30th place finish was only the third time all year she had finished outside the top 20. But she followed that up with a tie for 5th at the Florida's Natural Championship, then yet another tie for 5th at the Ginn Clubs & Resorts Open. That finish was yet another example of how Hee-Won can turn it on and shoot a great round when it counts: on Sunday she went out early and produced a 6 under par 66 to vault up the leaderboard. It was a nostalgic overload for the old time Korean stars that week, as Mi Hyun Kim won the event, while Se Ri Pak notched her first top ten in over a year.

And the fun was just getting started for Hee-Won. Her next two events, the Michelob Ultra Open and the Sybase Classic, would see her continue her top five streak in style. If she keeps up this kind of play, perhaps she won't be unknown in America much longer!

For the last few years, the Michelob Ultra Open has consistently been the second most lucrative event on the LPGA tour. Originally, Michelob sponsored a PGA event at the same location, but as the years went on, fewer and fewer of the top male golfers turned up at the event. Finally, the sponsors decided it would be a better deal for everyone if they changed the tournament to an LPGA event. For one thing, they would be able to lower their costs and still offer one of the top purses on the LPGA tour (there is a pretty big disparity between an average purse on the LPGA and on the PGA tour; the men make a whole lot more). And since they could offer a huge purse comparatively, they practically guaranteed that all the top tour stars would show up. In fact, every year since the event began, literally every top player that could make it to the event did. This year was no different, as all 50 of the top players on the money list made the trip to Williamsburg.

The event has seen its share of history for the Korean golfers as well. A Korean player, in fact, won the first ever Michelob Ultra Open in 2003. That player was Grace Park, and she did it in dramatic fashion, sinking a 20 foot par save on the final hole to avoid a play-off. The sight of Grace leaping joyfully into her caddie's arms was one few Seoul Sister fans will ever forget. The 2004 event was even more memorable. Coming from well behind, Se Ri Pak charged up the leaderboard, clinching the win on the final hole with a two putt par from the fringe to prevent rising Mexican star Lorena Ochoa from getting her first tour win. It was Se Ri's 22nd career win, the one that qualified her for induction into the Hall of Fame. It was also Se Ri's last win on tour (to date). Almost from the minute she finished drinking her victory beer from the trophy, she has struggled mightily with her games. But in 2006, she was showing signs that the old Se Ri was returning. Could she make this event her first step on the return to greatness?

Although those two Korean stars had won the event in the past, it was the other two old time Seoul Sisters who were the hot hands coming into the week. Mi Hyun Kim was coming off her victory at the Ginn Clubs Open, her first win in nearly four years. And Hee-Won was coming off of three top six finishes in her last four starts. Could one of those women stop the surging Karrie Webb, Cristie Kerr and Lorena Ochoa, who seemed to notch top tens without working up a sweat? And certainly Annika Sorenstam could never be counted out, despite a recent slump that had seen her go winless for four straight events.

After round one, Karrie Webb did in fact take control of the event. She shot a 5 under par 66 to move to a one shot lead. But right behind her was an unexpected player: Jimin Kang. Jimin in fact had been having a fairly good season up to this point, even notching her first top ten in quite some time a few weeks earlier in Las Vegas. On this day, she shot a 5 under par 67 to finish in solo second place. One shot behind them were two more Korean golfers, Jeong Jang and Meena Lee. Three golfers who had all won tournaments in the past year had put themselves in contention early.

Meanwhile, the two Korean women who had won this event in the past both had decent if unspectacular starts to the week. The best you could say about Se Ri Pak's round was that she kept the ball in the short grass. Her biggest problem the last few years has been her tendency to be extremely wild off the tee. It was especially evident when she defended her title in 2005: she sprayed her drives all over the place and missed the cut by a mile. On this day, her accuracy was far better. In fact, she hit 11 fairways and 13 greens. Despite that, she was only able to shoot a 2 over par 73, which left her once again fighting to make the cut. Grace made the same score, as did numerous other Koreans, including Mi Hyun Kim, Kyeong Bae and Il Mi Chung.