Michelle Wie is learning that a diploma from Stanford and a couple million dollars in the bank doesn’t guarantee success on the LPGA Tour.
She has a nice bank balance from endorsements and modeling gigs but that won’t help her make a five foot putt. Michelle Wie was a child prodigy. She qualified for the U. S. Women’s Public Links Championship at the age of 10.
At the age of 11 she won two amateur titles in Hawaii. While just 12 year old she won the Hawaii State Women’s Open by 13 shots and was the youngest ever to qualify for an LPGA event.
The next year she became the youngest player to ever make the cut in an LPGA tournament, the Kraft Nabisco. At this point Michelle Wie was definitely ahead of her time and the LPGA wouldn’t let her play in their sandbox because she was too young.
Fortune 500 companies started throwing millions of dollars at her but she was looking for bigger and better places to play. This is where the train may have started to come off the tracks for Michelle.
Because of her huge popularity in Hawaii, the Sony Open offered her an exemption to play the 2004 PGA tournament when she was just 14. She was playing beside the big boys hitting her driver over 275 yards, striking irons with precision, and was respectable around the greens. She even fired a 68 in the second round of the 2004 Sony but still missed the cut.
Wie would play in the Sony Open four times and also accepted an invitation to play in the John Deere Classic on the PGA Tour. She never made a cut playing with the men but rapidly became a household name.
Michelle tried playing against the boys again at the 2005 U. S. Amateur Public Links. She qualified through medal play into the top 64 for match play but was eventually beaten in the quarter-finals.
At the end of 2005, just before her 16th birthday, she announced that she would turn professional. Fast forward to today and Michelle Wie is a full-time member of the LPGA Tour. She has two official LPGA wins and has won nearly $2.5 million.
She just missed her seventh cut of the year at the Jamie Farr LPGA Classic. In 12 starts this season her highest finish has been a T-35 and she has only won $45,000. She is ranked ninth in driving distance but 144th in driving accuracy. She is averaging 31.83 putts per round which ranks her 143rd on tour.
Michelle looks completely lost on the greens and does not appear to be having much fun on the golf course. She is only 22 years old and still has a lot of time to win golf tournaments.
Golf can be a cruel game especially when a child starts to play at such a high level. In hindsight, maybe her parents should have considered moderating her schedule and let her play in situations where she could have been more successful.
Rather than chase the endorsement money and circus atmosphere she could have become a winning golfer. Someone that could help women’s golf gain credence and grow. Right now she is scrambling for her golfing life.
Maybe this struggle will help her find her way and become the Michelle Wie we have wanted to see since she was 12.