By Oh Young-jin
Assistant Managing Editor
Michelle Sung Wie has good looks. The 19-year-old Hawaiian native, born to Korean parents, is a Venus on the fairway (Wie is 185 centimeters tall, comparable to the larger-than-life Venus de Milo marble sculpture at the Louvre, which stands 203 centimeters tall including the square pedestal).
Wie has a good family background. Her father is a former professor at the University of Hawaii and her mother was a champion golfer. Wie attended Stanford University and is on a leave of absence to play in the U.S. LPGA tour.
Wie has a ``good'' sponsor who, according to some reports, went to the extent of coaching her on how to speak charmingly to Korean media; during a lengthy television interview, she picked ``tteokbokki,'' a dish of rice cakes chopped into blackboard chalk-sized pieces with a hot sticky red pepper sauce and a sprinkle of sliced green onion on top, as her favorite Korean food.
Crafty Sony got her a sponsor's exemption at the 2004 Sony Open to make her the youngest female player to play on a PGA tournament. Before her, only three women had ever been allowed to play in the men-only club. At that time, she was somewhere between 14 and 15 years of age.
Shin Ji-yai is just about the opposite of what Wie stands for.
Wie started playing with a golf club at the age of four (I don't know whether it was a seven iron or a dreadfully long No. 3). Obviously, her first encounter with the sport was from her father's round of golf after Sunday's service.
Desperation got Shin, who is from Gwangju, South Jeolla Province, into the game. I watched her talk about her personal life and her game of golf during a re-run of her recent television interview with Kang Ho-dong. Kang is a former champion ``ssirummer,'' who has now turned into a popular comedian.
The 157-centimeter-tall is always seen with a wide smile almost preset on her plump round face, making some people mistake it for a poker face. But when she talked about low points in her life, streams of tears welled up in her eyes and streaked down her cheeks, forcing her to lift her glasses and repeatedly wipe them with the back of her hand.
As is often the case with Korean women who play top-level professional golf, it was her father, a church minister in a poor neighborhood with an monthly pay of less than 1 million won, who decided for his eldest child to play golf, after Park Se-ri topped the U.S. LPGA tour and started Korean women's conquest of the sport. It also came after Shin had failed at archery, the first sport that her father had her work on because of Korean archers' Olympic gold-medal performances.
However, what really drove her into the game of golf was the death of her mother in a traffic accident.
After settling debts from a life insurance policy, the Shin family was left with 6 million won. Shin quoted her father as telling her: ``This is money we exchanged for your mother's life. I intend to spend it all on you.''
Shin spends virtually all her waking hours on making her game perfect ― about 14 hours a day. Interesting footage shown during an interview showed her hitting a retread tire tied to a tree with an aluminum baseball bat (For beginners, try this at home and risk blowing a chance to learn a good swing).
At least to me, Shin's drive swings seem beyond human flaws and her concentration when putting on the green appears to be sheer steel. But she was no longer ``the final round queen,'' as her competitors jealously call her, but turned into an ordinary girl of 20 years of age when she spoke about a prank she pulled on her demanding father during her tour, or the nervous eve of the final round of the 2008 Women's British Open, which she eventually won. She was also willing to step down from her winner's podium, or set aside her green jacket, when asked about her biggest wish. She answered, ``liposuction.'' ``Where?'' was the follow-up question. She replied, ``All over.''
As an amateur golfer aspiring to lower handicaps into countable numbers, I wouldn't want to be immodest enough to say Shin is better than Wie or the other way around.
But in the capacity of a ``couch commentator,'' I am concerned for both of them for my own very selfish reason.
In the spirit of golf, I see Wie risking hitting a long putt short. In layman's terms, she has been overexploited for commercial purposes without being given a chance to live up to her athletic potential.
As for Shin, I want her to have fun, and not only win. Perhaps an appropriate golf metaphor would be that she can now afford to do body English for a missed putt and show some emotion.
Speaking of my selfish reason, I wish to see them play good golf for a long time to come so I can keep on dreaming of hitting a 250-yard drive shot down the middle of the fairway, or a perfect 5-meter putt on the green. I know that I only have a fighting chance of getting my wish in reality. But, certainly, the two golfers will be able to get their glitches out of the game.