Michelle Wie to Play in First Koren Open in May
She’s at it again….playing with the men. Early May will see Michelle Wie on her way to her ancestral roots to play in the 2006 SK Telecom Open.
The purse is a measly $600,000, kind of light for a men’s tournament but great if she wins. Even if she doesn’t win, or even make the cut for that matter, Wie will earn a hefty “appearance” fee in the multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars.
One has to wonder what the older generations of golfers think about this kind of compensation. Nicklaus and Palmer started out playing tournaments whereby you didn’t get paid anything unless you made the top 10. Now you can miss cuts in every tournament and still make a killing. Apparantly she will be arriving early, to practice no doubt but also to visit cancer patients and young boys and girls in orphanages. And she will also get some down-home Korean food in the way of Ddeokboggi and Boongeoppang (try to say those 3 times fast!). More on this tournament when it arrives.