Park Ji-eun Named to ‘Sexiest Golfers’ List

Recently on the Korean Ladies Professional Golf Association (KLPGA) Tour, a plastic surgery “breeze” was in the air. Surgeries were done to make eyes look bigger and noses higher, and at times scalpels were applied to breasts. The reason? One must also have good looks in order to strengthen one’s ‘market value’ and get sponsors on the tour.

Park Ji-eun (28, Nike Golf), a player in the U.S. Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) Tour, stands out as an object of envy in this regard. Although she has recently been in a slump, she possesses great capacity as well as physical features. In 2004, she was voted best dresser by fans on a survey conducted on the LPGA Tour website. Park was also selected as one of the eight sexiest women golf players by the U.S. golf website, ‘golf.com.’

According to this website, Park Ji-eun is voluptuous and it mentions that she has six wins including a major on the LPGA Tour, the Kraft Nabisco Championship. The site analyzed Park’s game as having a subtle charm to it, being an ‘everything or nothing’ style of aggressive play as she makes enough birdies to earn herself the name ‘Birdie Queen,’ but is also known to make a lot of double bogies as well. Natalie Gulbis (24), Paula Creamer (20), and Cristie Kerr (29) from the U.S., and Sophie Sandolo (30, France), Anna Rawson (25, Australia), Paula Marti Zambrano (27, Spain), and Carin Koch (36, Sweden) were also selected along with Park Ji-eun.

Gulbis, who is 177cm tall and wears glittering high heels in the club house even during competitions, has not been able to claim a single win since her debut on the LPGA Tour in 2002, but enjoys such great popularity that she holds more than five strong sponsors, such as Adidas, TaylorMade and Master Card. She is frequently on the cover of men’s magazines, and at the 2004 U.S. Women’s Open was prohibited by the United States Golf Association from selling a swimsuit calendar featuring herself.

Meanwhile, the website is conducting an online popularity vote asking, “Who is the sexiest among the eight?” Park Ji-eun, who had remained in fourth place with a vote of 11.2% until early June 14, suddenly jumped to first place, rising to 30.2% during the afternoon of the same day on what could be a surge of Korean ballots with a total of 2,251 votes. Rawson, who is working as a model and won this season’s Ladies European Tour (LET), is trailing Park in second place (23.7%).

kjs0123@donga.com