Michelle Wie
Yani Tseng, who has bagged four titles in a row so far this year, sets out in the company of Cristie Kerr and Na Yeon Choi in tomorrow's opening round of the HSBC Champions at Tanah Merah.
Tseng is the World No. 1 of the moment but she is well aware that players like Kerr and Choi, each of whom had a spell in the No. 1 spot in 2010, are angling to get back to where they feel they belong.
"There are so many good players out there," said Tseng. "I'm just going to have to keep working hard and to keep winning if I'm to stay ahead of them all."
However, though everyone assumes that the stress of winning so much in such a short period of time will catch up with her before too long, Tseng gives the impression that she is still as relaxed as she was at the start of the season. She says that she does not carry the pressure forward from one week to the next - and that it is her intention to have fun on the Garden Course. Certainly, she was doing just that as she featured among the morning starters in today's pro-am.
The Tseng trio, which departs the first tee at 10.08 tomorrow, is sandwiched between two equally watchable parties.
I. K. Kim, Karrie Webb and Paula Creamer are in the group directly in front, with Jiyai Shin, Ai Miyazato and Michelle Wie right behind.
Wie, who will finish her degree at Stanford in 2012, had a spell with David Leadbetter at the start of this year and was playing well enough in Thailand last week to finish second to Tseng as the latter was making off with the fourth of her 2011 trophies. Wie was up there with the Taiwanese golfer over the first nine holes of the final round but could not get the putts to drop on the second half.
Singapore's 22-year-old Christabel Goh sets off a little earlier than all of the above - at 9.13 to be precise - in the company of Eun-Hee Ji and Inbee Park. Goh, who has based herself in the States, is the first women golfer on the island to make a name for herself since that local legend, Kee Bee Kim, won comfortably over 30 Singapore Island Amateur championships and represented her country in top amateur events all over the world.
Meanwhile, tennis fans will enjoy casting an eye over Jessica Korda, the daughter of Petr Korda, a former finalist in the Australian Open. Jessica finished second in the LPGA's December Qualifying school and is appearing in what is only her second event as a professional. She slipped down the field with closing rounds of 78 and 75 in Thailand last weekend but was putting things to rights on the Tanah Merah practice ground first thing on Monday morning.
The Garden Course is in exquisite shape for the competitors, some of whom are obviously going to feel more deserving than others of the red-carpet treatment which awaits at the end of the penultimate hole.
