PLAYERS FROM ASIA WOULD MAKE FORMIDABLE TEAM

It is hard to get too excited about this week's Solheim Cup — the LPGA Tour's answer to the Ryder Cup. It's because more than half of the best women players in the world — based on the latest LPGA Top 20 money list — aren't involved.

Like the Ryder Cup, the Solheim Cup is a biennial match-play event open only to teams made up of players born in the United States and Europe. So much for the rest of the world.

Golf has emerged as a global sport, thanks in large part to Australia's Greg Norman, a three-time PGA player of the year.

So the men have gone ahead and included the rest of the world by launching the Presidents Cup in 1994, opening the way for Norman and other Australians, as well as South Africa's Ernie Els and Retief Goosen, Nick Price of Zimbabwe and Fiji's Vijay Singh to take on the Americans as the Europeans have been doing.

The Presidents Cup is now a fixture, being held in alternate years with the Ryder Cup, except for 2001 because of 9/11.

There is no equivalent of a Presidents Cup in women's golf.

It is time that the LPGA begin thinking about an event to be played during the non-Solheim Cup years so that the growing number of other successful international players on its tour can get a crack at the Americans as well.

The rest of that world is more than ready.

In 1991, only two of the top 50 players on the LPGA Tour were not Americans. Now, there are 28 players from South Korea alone playing full time on the American tour.

Five of them — Jimin Kang, Birdie Kim, Meena Lee, Jeong Jang and Soo-Yun Kang — have won tournaments this year, including two majors with Kim winning the U.S. Women's Open and Jang, the Women's British Open.

Also, Gloria Park and Hee-Won Han are among the top-20 money leaders with Grace Park and Mi-Hyun Kim not far behind.

The South Korean golfers have consistently posted top-10 finishes in a majority of the tournaments in the past two years, and even finished 1-2-3-4 in the LPGA Safeway Classic in Beaverton, Ore., last month.

The "other-world" talent pool includes Mexico's Lorena Ochoa, who ranks fourth on the current money list (behind Annika Sorenstam and Americans Cristie Kerr and Paula Creamer), and Taiwan's Candie Kung and Canada's Lorie Kane.

Besides Ochoa, who won the Wegmans Rochester LPGA, two other 2005 winners can't play in the Solheim Cup simply because of geography — Colombia's Marisa Baena, who captured the World's Match Play Championship, and Jennifer Rosales of the Philippines, who took the inaugural SBS Open at the Turtle Bay Resort.

It surely must be disappointing for those players and their fans that there isn't an equivalent of a Presidents Cup in women's golf.

What makes it doubly galling is that there is no other LPGA event this week. It is an off week for everyone else except the chosen 24 at the Crooked Stick Golf Club in Carmel, Ind.

At least for the men, there is a PGA Tour event during the week of both the Ryder Cup and the Presidents Cup.

The Valero Texas Open will be held later this month during the same week of the sixth Presidents Cup at the Robert Trent Jones Golf Club in Virginia. It was also the opposite tournament during last year's Ryder Cup.

I remember talking to outgoing LPGA commissioner Ty Votaw in February about the need to broaden the world in women's golf by adding a second biennial team competition.

Votaw said that the inaugural Women's World Cup of Golf in South Africa that started the 2005 season was a step in that direction. But with only 20 countries represented by two-person teams, it was only a small step.

The LPGA needs to take a bigger step.

And, wouldn't you know it, Japan, South Korea and the Philippines — still regarded as "third-world" countries as far as the Solheim Cup is concerned — finished 1-2-3, respectively, in that inaugural team event.

Team USA, captained by Nancy Lopez, will have trouble enough this week, trying to stop the Europeans, who won in a rout two years ago in Sweden.

Imagine how much more difficult a task it would be trying to defeat an international dream team that would include Ochoa, Baena and Kung, plus all those South Koreans.

With Kerr and Creamer soon to be joined by young guns Michelle Wie and Morgan Pressel, the Americans might rise to the challenge in the future.

But for now, the LPGA needs to develop its own version of the Presidents Cup to go along with the Solheim Cup so that the best women golfers in the world, not just from the U.S. and Europe, can be showcased.

The Solheim Cup is the most prestigious women's team event in the world.

But, clearly, not the whole world.