Michelle Wie v. Golf
Consider Michelle Wie. Now 20-years-old, the phenom from Hawaii burst onto the professional golf scene in the period between 2003-2005. By her sixteenth birthday, she had already played an event on the men's PGA Tour twice. She then turned pro, signed with Nike, and promptly almost won a women's professional major, the LPGA Championship. The following year, she almost won the other four. By 2007, she was earning $19 million per year. Her beautiful, flowing swing has been called the best in golf, for a man or a woman, by Johnny Miller. She is an appealing, attractive, marketable young woman who will soon graduate from Stanford.
And from the moment she arrived, the golf establishment and the media have harassed, hounded, and undermined her success.
Why would golf do this to its most bankable star since Tiger Woods? Simple: She's a woman in a sport full of men who never stop being threatened. The golf establishment, especially in the United States, is full of venal, haunted little men -- players, executives, sportswriters, broadcasters -- who pledge allegiance to the spirit and dignity of an ancient Scottish game, but who in truth want to dismiss anything that disrupts their once-comfortable lock on the sport.
It's been forgotten now, but Tiger was assailed when he first arrived. Some called his epic 1997 Masters win a fluke. Others suggested that he had been given unfair advantages by being allowed to skip the PGA Tour's qualifying school. But over the ensuing years, through sheer brilliance, Woods wore down his critics. By the time he won the 2008 U.S. Open, limping through a Monday playoff on what was effectively a broken leg, all naysaying had been vanquished.
Wie, by contrast, has been worn down, by the media, the sport's overlords, and her peers. Only recently has she begun to show signs of her teen dazzle. But it could be too late, as the LPGA Tour has experienced an armageddon of sorts since the financial crisis hit in late 2008.
The LPGA was already in bad shape. It had a great crop of new, young players, including Wie, but it was failing to convert them into tournament draws. As Wie fell in the rankings and suffered through controversy after controversy, players such as Lorena Ochoa, Cristie Kerr, Morgan Pressel, and Paula Creamer stepped up, but the world was indifferent. Meanwhile, a bevy of South Korean players was arriving. They were all talented, but it was an impossible TV sell. If the LPGA couldn't get viewers to watch Ochoa and Creamer, it was going to find the South Koreans challenging. Some commenters even went so far as to argue that the game's future lay not in the U.S. and Europe, but in Asia, and South Korea in particular. Given how good the South Korean women are, they're probably right.
This was the exact moment the LPGA, and golf in general, needed Wie, to act as a marquee draw, to establish a showcase for her peers and to allow the South Korean generation to gain exposure. Instead, golf has made sure that Wie wasn't a factor. But golf had committed a grave sin against Karma. As the financial meltdown laid low sponsor after sponsor, the LPGA was forced to scrounge. But what did it have to sell? Ochoa, a wonderful Mexican player and a player in the mold of the great international sportswomen of history, but beyond her, a coterie of inconsistent youngsters.
Wie is currently ranked 15th in the Rolex Women's World Golf Rankings. She earned her playing privileges the hard way, by going through LPGA Q-school. She seems committed to women's golf, and to winning a professional event, and has put her foray into the men's game behind her. And yet...golf still hasn't given the love to this extraordinary, potential champion, and its best hope to ensure the survival of women's pro golf during what has to be seen as the most serious crisis in its history. The LPGA Tour has lost tournaments and seen prize money reduced in 2009. The only good news is that, in partnership with The Golf Channel, the LPGA no longer has to pay to get its events on TV, as it did for a number of years.
Golf likes to pretend that the game is bigger than any individual player, but over its history, that pretense has been upended time and time again -- to the sport's benefit. Bobby Jones, although a great sportsman, was briefly bigger than the game. Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus were bigger than the game. The great female champion Babe Didrikson Zaharias was bigger than the game. Tiger Woods...well, Tiger is bigger than anyone who has ever been bigger than the game.
Michelle Wie had the potential to be bigger than the game and to provide women's golf with the worldwide explosion in popularity that it needs. But the best possible time for that to happen was two or three years ago, before she was buried under an avalanche of negativity and slumped. She's back now, and she seems like a more mature person and more complete player. But opportunity lost is still opportunity lost. And if women's golf continues to falter, golf will only have itself and its ridiculous, petty culture to blame. Wie was, and to a degree, still is the future. Her ascent was Tiger Woods crossed with the Williams sisters. Her decline was troubling. Her comeback is critical.
Follow Matthew DeBord on Twitter: www.twitter.com/mattdebord
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Jim C, have you ever been to tour school? As a player? As a caddy? As a spectator? Have you ever even driven past tour school on the road?
Just so you know Annika Sorenstam won her first LPGA Tour event at age 24 years, 9 months.
Michelle Wie just won her first at age 20 years, 4 days.
Oh, Jim C, guess you weren't aware that in 2006, her first year as a pro, Michelle Wie earned $730,971 in prize money in 8 tournaments. This amount would have EASILY qualified her for a tour card for 2007 but for the fact that she was only 16 and the tour minimum age is 18. There have been exceptions made to the 18-rule, and odds were that Michelle would have been granted tour membership had she applied for the exception, but she didn't. In 2005 she passed up prize money that would probably have exceeded her 2006 total, but she retained her amateur status instead. So that would have been two straight years she could have qualified for the tour based on earnings.
Hey, Jim C., no reason to let the facts get in the way of a good story....r
How can you call Q School the hard way to earn a card. Shin won 3 LPGA events last year including a Major and the Tour Championship--that sounds a lot harder than top 20 at Q School? Making it on the money list is not as impressive at that--but with just 6 events to do it in, it is still much harder than Q School. The myth that Q School is the hard way was just a lie that mediocre players told themselves so they could pretend they were better than a real star who was not an LPGA member because she was too young to qualify.
The golf establishment was just dying for Michelle Wie to succeed...
As for the slump, have you ever gone and taken a look at her year-by-year numbers? She was only playing the tour part time and was doing fantastic, making a lot of money and finishing high in a lot of events. Then she had an injury, started college, and became a bit tough to deal with like a lot of teenagers do. She's gotten past that and it's off to the races now...and keep in mind that Michelle Wie just turned 20 yesterday.
Care to guess how old Annika Sorenstam was when she won her first LPGA Tour event?
Michelle65, you're right, you have no idea what you are talking about. Did you know that Venus has a boyfriend who's a golfer? Matter of fact, he won the US Amateur and then played the PGA Tour for several years. There is no way Venus, or any woman alive, could consistently compete with the boyfriend and/or his brethren. And as for Michelle, she had some darn good tourneys against the men but I'm glad she's turned her attention to the ladies tour full-time. And what "smack" are you talking about? Is it the ramblings of a 15-16yr old kid? I assume you never said or did anything dumb when you were 15 or 16?
Weak article, very very weak.
I meant Memphis65, NOT Michelle65!
Nothing would be more fitting than for ALL professional "sports", including the media devoted to them, to go absolutely, irretrievably "toes up!" Michelle Wie bore the brunt of what's most disgusting about pro sports: the insatiable greed of its "managing elites" and its tendency to exploit to the max, then cast aside athletes who are especially talented, then pass their performance prime. Pro sports, and the whole edifice of exploitation that it represents, ain't nothin' but a modern repeat of Roman Circuses, complete with gladiators readily thrown to the lions, whenever they either decline from their peak performances or "offend" or threaten some one or more of the elites in charge.
Knowing in advance that I will be flamed, I think any lack of support of Michelle is due to her lack of ability to back up all her hype. She talked of being able to compete with and beat PGA players, but when she tried, her performance was less than stellar. So if you are going to talk smack, you best be able to back it up.
Quite honestly I think the day will come when a female golfer will beat the best PGA players on their own turf. (I'm pretty sure that with all of the muscle strength of the Williams sisters they could hit the ball just as far as the PGA players if they had decided to go into golf instead of tennis)
And none of what I have said here discounts the truth of the statement of the writer. The problem is, this feeling of being threatened isn't unique to golf, or to males for that matter. I'm a pharmacist and I have seen first hand where the female nurses will gang up on a new male nurse with excellent skills. His areas of excellence will be minimized and his flaws highlighted to the rafters.
Let's just be honest. Those in power don't like losing that power. It's nothing new.
Listen to sports radio for ten minutes. This is the last place where racial and gender discrimination are ok, and that particularly applies to golf. I hope Ms. Wie can make some headway against it all!
This author must have been in hibernation the past few years. Wie's parents have mismanaged her career. She's been injured. She's gone through many caddies and agents. She turned pro too soon to get the Nike money instead of learning how to win as an amateur as Tiger did. Hopefully, her recent Solheim Cup experience without her parents helicoptering over her will bode well for the future. I place most of the blame on her parents.
This is totally wrong. MIchelle went into a severe slump in late 2005 that lasted until very recently, primarily due to two separate wrist injuries and a major swing swing change. Pressure from her parents who have actively managed every stage of her career may have also contributed to a high stress level, which does not mix well with professional golf. She has not had the "long, flowing" swing since 2005, the new swing is very compact and short. I don't know anyone in the golf establishment who resented her success or wished for her failure.
The LPGA has been stuck for the past few years with a commissioner (Carolyn Bivens) who did not put much consideration into marketing women's golf to American audiences. Michael Whan, who takes over in that position in January, comes from a marketing background; with young American players like Wie, Creamer, Pressel, Natalie Gulbis, and Brittany Lincicome becoming fixtures on LPGA leaderboards, he should fare better in his role than his predecessor.
She's the Obama of women's golf. She's accomplished nothing yet the hype lives on. Marketing and potential (the fancy French word for "ain't done shiit yet") are carrying her.
What a magnificently wrongheaded contribution. No one in golf wanted Michelle Wie to succeed in a big way more than the golf establishment. Which is why some of her fellow LPGA players resented her special handling by the same powers. Exemptions into championships and invitations to play on the PGA TOUR come readily to mind, despite the fact that the most recent golf tournament of any kind actually won by Michelle Wie was the U.S. Women's Amateur Public Links Championship in 2003. Michelle Wie has been hampered mostly by the unrealistic expectations placed on her by her agents at IMG and the absurd behavior of "Team Wie" represented by her parents, who among other things apparently wanted to practically live in her dorm with her at Stanford. Earlier this year when she escaped their shadow at the Solheim Cup Michelle Wie blossomed. Everyone in Golf is hoping that continues. Even the old white guys.
She will be back next year. She was close this year.
The LPGA needs a heroine of Wie's potential stature but she needs to win. The mental game is so important in what is a 72 hole stage performance marathon. Some of golf establishment's ambivalence to Wie stems from her father's perceived boorish behavior, but at its root has to do with the fact that Michelle (a Korean-American) does not sashay the courses with a blond ponytail.
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