The tiger stripes were flashing at the USPGA. The Premiership was off with usual synthetic fanfare and thunderclaps. From the front room you could hear Croke Park filling and rumbling. And meanwhile Se Ri Pak was getting blown away.
Which is a pity because Se Ri Pak is a hell of a story. You thought of Se Ri Pak last week when the class action suit arrived on your desk. A large bunch of readers suing your column for repetitive stress injuries brought on by a constant diet of Michelle de Bruin stories, doping stories. They got dizzy trying to make it to the high moral ground. So you thought you'd write about Se Ri Pak and hoped that in turn Se Ri Pak would do the business.
She swings a golf club with a mesmerising beauty, each swoosh through the fleeing air a facsimile of the previous one so that you wonder finally if the first perfect arc was the only genuine wonder and all else has been mere replication. And if it makes any difference.
Like Tiger Woods she was blown away by the treacherous winds with which golfers in this part of the world like to tussle. She hasn't worked out the old sea-salt tricks of tacking a line through the elements and fooling the breezes. She will, though.
She is a better story than Tiger Woods who blew the house down one day but has been evolving into a franchised good old boy ever since. Even his big bluff buddy Mark O'Meara has more majors under his belt now than Tiger has. But Se Ri Pak? She's different.
She was born and reared in South Korea and no sportsperson has colonised the South Korean imagination quite like she has. The South Korean members of the great and noble sportswriting tribe follow Se Ri Pak around for weeks on end, signing up for the long haul like pimply conscripts.
It's quite a journey. At tournaments in America it isn't unusual to see 5,000 or 6,000 fans trailing after her from fairway to green.
The rest of us have to be quick to catch Se Ri Pak. Women's golf doesn't get the dusk-to-dawn coverage of the men's game. And in the old world where we live golf is still the men's game really, an expression of economic dominance, the spirit of boys' club fraternalism, the emblem of our selfdeluding middle age. Any wonder boys don't want women pouring through the gates.
So you catch Se Ri Pak in the downtimes, when women's golf is beamed out on the box as a minority interest curiosity, like golf lite. You catch her then and read the odd colour piece on her and suddenly the light bulb clicks on. The woman is a hero.
Twenty years old and in her rookie season. The sort of role model, hero, icon kids should have. A wonderful golfer who happens to be female.
The Americans are an amusing bunch in many respects. We all know of course that the US government through the CIA, founded and covertly funded the Worldwide Committee to Nobble Michelle de Bruin but beyond that the Americans genuinely seem to get the point about women's sport. Certainly the US media are closer to understanding it than we in Ireland or Britain are.
This run-down hack stopped over in New York on the way back from the Atlanta Olympics and found his chosen hotel swarming with bulbpopping hacks and autograph book-toting fans. Mia Hamm was staying in a suite upstairs and Mia Hamm, soccer player, was a major star filling in a diary full of big media engagements, Letterman tonight, Good Morning America tomorrow. She makes elbow room for herself by contending not just with the old male hegemony but vying for space with the gamut of like chromosomed superstars from Marion Jones to Dominique Moceanu to Rebecca Twigg to Sheryl Swoopes.
So if you are Se Ri Pak and you are South Korean and good at golf the only place to be is America. She bought a house in Orlando. Her sponsors Samsung signed up David Leadbetter. She practised for 10 hours a day. She strode out. She has won two majors. She has become a millionaire. She gets up and reads the headlines every day. Yes Se Ri, they say.
In July in Wisconsin she beat an amateur Jenny Chuasiriporn in a 20-hole play-off to decide the US Open. Se Ri Pak cried.
Se Ri Pak is South Korean and the lazy racist view of her demeanour would be that she is inscrutable. Her detachment is a learned trait, however. As a girl she dreaded cemeteries like some people dread dentists. So she went and camped in one and listened to her father tell her ghost stories all night.
But she cried after the US Open. So would you. Having been taken to a Monday play-off round she watched her opponent chip in from 30 feet on the first, birdie two more by the sixth. Pak came back with birdies on 12, 14 and 15. Then dunked into the water on the 18th and the championship went to sudden death.
Se Ri Pak knocked down an 18-foot putt on the second sudden-death hole. End of story. It wasn't the best golf she has played but it was the most exciting. The best was probably during her first major win, in May, when she won the McDonald's LPGA (the first of the season's majors, indeed her first major) on 23 under par.
We miss out on all this. Se Ri Pak and Mia Hamm and the galaxy of stars whom our daughters (and sons) might look to instead of being asked how dishy they think Michael Owen is. It is a discriminatory Catch 22. Women's sport in this part of the world doesn't get enough media attention to draw big crowds and big sponsors. It doesn't draw enough sponsors and crowds to draw the media attention. Put aside Sonia, Catherina and Michelle and most of us would struggle to pick an Irish female sports star out of an identity parade.
But for Se Ri Pak it ain't a man's world. She lives in Orlando and employs David Leadbetter. Samsung swing her $3 million a year. She has a youth in which she was a champion sprinter, hurdler and shot putter.
She took to golf six years ago. Turned professional two years ago after a glittering amateur career and won six professional tournaments in her first season.
It would have been nice if she had scorched the earth at the British Open and opened our eyes to new possibilities. But she doesn't know any of this. In the old world we may need our eyes opened. Where Se Ri Pak lives she's just taking care of business.
