Michelle Wie, the hottest thing in women’s golf, will be the star draw at next week’s SK Telecom Open where she will bid to make her first halfway cut against men in eight appearances.
At the Sky 72 Golf Club in Incheon, on the outskirts of Seoul, she will face the likes of defending champion and three-time US PGA Tour winner KJ Choi of Korea along with a host of the region’s top golfers.
The teen prodigy will be the third high profile woman golfer after Laura Davies of England and Japan’s Ai Miyazato to feature on the Asian Tour.
Still in high school in Hawaii, Wie turned professional last year and finished third in the Kraft Nabisco Championship, the LPGA’s first major of the year, earlier this month.
”I’m happy with the way I played in my first major as a professional. I wish I would have played a little better like the last nine holes. But I’m still happy with the way I finished,” said Wie.
Former world number one Davies played in the Korean Open in 2003 but missed the halfway cut with rounds of 78 and 77 while Miyazato finished last after two rounds at the Okinawa Open last December.
Two other lesser known women golfers from China and Taiwan also played recently against the men on the Asian Tour but without success.
Wie was born in Hawaii but her parents are from Korea and it was the first language she learned. She is currently studying Chinese and Japanese.
The powerful teenager, who regularly smacks her drive to 300 yards, came close to making the halfway cut against the men at the Casio World Open in Japan last November but two closing bogeys saw her exit by one shot.
No woman has made the cut at a US PGA Tour event since Babe Didrikson Zaharias in 1945.
The SK Telecom Open will be played from May 4-7 and is the 12th leg of this season’s Asian Tour. – AFP
