This past weekend Se Ri Pak won the prestigious women's professional golfer's association championship. In a tense playoff, the South Korean ace, destined for golf hall-of-fame enshrinement, laser-whacked a 4-iron across the comparable length of a pair of American-sized football fields to within a bunch of lipstick smears of the hole.

The breathtaking, pressure-packed shot broke the back of her playoff opponent, for in effect that stroke was all this gifted lady athlete needed to notch the 23rd triumph of her tremendous career.

The dramatic victory also punctuated Pak's return to the professional golf tour after a period of self-imposed retirement. Burned out, bummed out and physically banged up, this lithe and determined woman had started feeling old. In fact, after her playoff defeat of a sister aging super-golfer Karrie Webb, the two champions openly joked about how the old girls of the ladies' tour perhaps weren't quite dead yet.

Pak, you see, is all of 28 years of age; Webb is 31. Bring on the hospital gurneys! It must be tough to have to haul those ancient bones across a course of 18 holes. Perhaps the management of the Bulle Rock Golf Course in Maryland should have offered to provide these two old ladies with electric wheel-chairs and assisted-living aides, much less ordinary golf carts to obviate all the path-walking and stroke-risking.

It's really pathetically funny: In the old days, the 30-year-mark used to be defined as the coming approach shot of middle-age. But no longer, says the American Association of Retired Persons and their comely spokesmodel Lauren Hutton: 60 (that's six-zero, folks) is the new 30, it is said, as people are living longer and healthier than ever.

Indeed, Se Ri and Karrie probably do not know it, but, actuarially speaking, they both have a long way to go: Their time's hardly up yet! Do you know what the fastest-growing demographic group is in the United States right now? It's the 100-plus age group. Yup, that's right: Over the last half century, there's almost 20 times as many plus-100s. You can look it up.

Se Ri Pak is well aware of what's happening. "There is a difference now," she said after winning the LPGA. "Before, it was only me. Now everyone comes to see Michelle Wie."

Look, teenage Wie is stylish and has a heckuva golf swing and, like Pak, is easy on the eyes. Had Wie instead of Pak won the weekend tournament, which she lost by just a few strokes, she'd have become the youngest winner of a major world ladies' golf championship ever. This would be historic.

But she didn't, and so it wasn't. Nevertheless, the TV cameras followed her with unflagging interest. It's funny, because, as the world is getting older, the media's taste is becoming more and more youth-oriented -- if not totally juvenile.

What's so rotten about 31 years of age? Aristotle -- remember him? -- once stated that "the human body reaches maturity between the ages of 30 and 35." But what did he know?

Not everyone in the news media played up the youth angle. Thankfully, there was the Korean angle. It's a big story: Superstar Korean golfers are about as common today as superstar Korean violinists. It's a tribute to the Korean culture of hard work -- and then more hard work. As Webb, an exceptionally cosmopolitan Australian, pointed out in an age-blind tribute to Pak, "In 1998, there was one Korean on the tour. Now there are 32. That's because of her. She is the face of Korean golf."

Still standing at the very end of the LPGA Sunday -- all with chances to win -- were Korean golfers Mi Hyun Kim, Shi Hyun Ahn, and Seon Hwa Lee. This is no aberration: So far this year, Korean women alone have won one half of the ladies' tournaments and about a third of the total prize money.

This is cache, read story here