Tuesday, May 2 2006 13:11 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Seoul: Teenage golf prodigy Michelle Wie on Monday said she was looking forward to trying to make her first-ever cut in a men's golf tournament in Seoul this week.

"I really want to play well in this game," the 16-year-old US golfer, whose parents come from Korea, told a news conference. Wie is seeking to make the cut in the $600,000 SK Telecom Open in Incheon on the outskirts of Seoul from May 4-7, the 12th leg of the Asian Tour.

She will compete against 150 male golfers, including defending champion, South Korea's KJ Choi.

If she succeeds she will be the first woman to do so since Babe Didrikson Zaharias in 1945. Still at school in Hawaii, Wie turned professional last year and finished third in the Kraft Nabisco Championship, the LPGA's first major of the year, earlier this month.

"It's sometimes not easy to be good at schooling and golfing," she said.

"I had a little headache in the morning because I had just done my homework in the car. It was an English essay I had to write on 'The Great Gatsby'. I am fine now," she said Monday.

Regularly driving 300 yards, Wie came close to making the cut in an all male field at the Casio World Open in Japan last November but two closing bogeys saw her lose out by a single shot.