LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Ai Miyazato
built 665 days ago
KAPOLEI, Hawaii— Ai Miyazato is everywhere in Japan: on billboards at the airport, magazine covers, TV commercials and daily sports pages. But Miyazato isn't satisfied with just being a superstar in Japan _ she wants to be a winner in the U.S.
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Miyazato's magnetism is so pervasive, the media room has been expanded by 75 for the SBS Open. Even more chilling, there is currently a 50-foot snow-and-ice sculpture depicting her likeness in Sapporo (she is from Okinawa).
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Ai Miyazato is the player that Paula Creamer beat down the stretch last month to win in Japan. To beat a player that good who is rock-star popular in her home country on a strange course was more than just a footnote, as some have suggested.
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Miyazato would not be the first player to spark a surge in national interest in golf. The number of female golf players in Sweden has increased by more than half to 146,000 since the top-ranked Annika Sorenstam won the 1995 U.S. Open, Swedish Golf Federation figures show.
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Webb, in stark contrast to Miyazato, was at odds with her putter, the wonder being it was not consigned to one of the lakes. She birdied the ninth hole, her last, to card a two-under 70, an ordinary round by her standards around Royal Pines.
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To relax, Miyazato enjoys shopping and movies. "But it is very hard for me to go shopping without a disguise in Japan now," she says. "So I look forward to doing that in the USA -- without a disguise."
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Ai Miyazato