Hwan Hee-won in Second Place, “Possible to Have Her Third Win”

Who will be “the star of stars” this season?

The third round of the 2003 U.S. LPGA Tournament of Champions (total prize of 750 thousand dollars) was held at Robert Trent Jones Trail GC crossing course (par 72), Mobile, Alabama, USA on November 16 (Korean time after since now). The winners of the regular competitions of the last three years, and the current members of the Hall of Fame were allowed to participate in this match, making confused fights continued for three days.

There are only six players who are close to victory, with scores of under par. Three of these, Kim Mi-hyun (KTF), in co-third place (3-under par and 213 strokes), Park Ji-eun, in sixth place (2-under par and 214 strokes), as well as Han Hee-won (Fila Korea), in second place (4-under par and 212 strokes), are among the players of the “Korean Corps” and have chances to become the champion.

In particular, Han Hee-won maintained her putting sense, hitting only one bogey on the “glass plate-like” fast green, and her third win is expected. She started the final fourth round in a “champion group” with Dorosi Delasin (U.S.) with a 5-under par and 211 strokes score, who is ahead of Han Hee-won by only one stroke at 2:36 a.m. on November 17.

Kim Mi-hyun, having an opportunity for her first win of this season, had two consecutive days of hitting below par, and Park Ji-eun, hitting the day’s best with an outstanding 5-under par and 67 strokes that day, are scheduled to meet in the same group and confront each other.

In the meantime, it is interesting to see if Park Se-ri (CJ, tied for seventh place with an even-par and 216 strokes) can write a reversal story and start to make a late chase by hitting the day’s best score as Park Ji-eun did at the third round.

If Park Se-ri, who won two consecutive rounds with the lowest score (total of 20-under par and 268 strokes) last year, wins the championship again, she will become a heroine as only the seventh “player with three consecutive victories in a tournament” and will fulfill the points (27points) needed to enter the Hall of Fame.

On the other hand, with the high expectations of “Cinderella” Ahn Shi-hyun (Kolon), she unfortunately didn’t succeed in lowering her strokes and finished the day with a 3-over par and 75 strokes, as she experienced a tough U.S. stage with three straight days’ of over par score. With two players already giving up, she is in the 27th place (13-over par and 229 strokes) out of a total of 29 players.

Young-Sik Ahn ysahn@donga.com