Christmas 9—Michelle Wie West was unlike any other golfer, ever. She was unlike any other athlete, period.
Michelle Wie West was unlike any other golfer, ever. She was unlike any other athlete, period.
But she, like everyone, could never escape this: We all have good days and bad days.
It’s magnified if you are an elite athlete, especially a professional golfer, and a good day is when you win and it’s a bad day when you don’t. And there are a lot more of the latter.
It’s the nature of the game. Only one player can win a tournament.
That guy, Tiger Woods … pretty good, right? He has won 82 PGA events—out of nearly 400 entered.
They say hitting a baseball is the hardest thing to do in sports. But the winning percentage of arguably the greatest golfer barely reaches the infamous Mendoza Line of .200.
Who? She won five times in 230 LPGA events.
The way a lot of people liked to see it, that meant she failed 225 times.
Remember what the narrative was about when she was a kid? A lot of the experts professed she should have been “learning how to win” by playing with girls her age instead of the best in the world (men included), even though she could drive a ball 300 yards before she was old enough to drive a car.
Many saw the exemptions that didn’t go to a pro as sideshow gimmicks.
She was 10 the first time I interviewed her. When she told me she planned to play in the Masters, I didn’t put it in my story. Maybe I should have … but, hey, she was 10.
She kept saying it, and other things like it. And she kept doing some things that made it all seem possible; her raw talent was unprecedented.
So was the hype. Then there was the pushback against the hype, and the pushback against the pushback against the hype.
That might seem tiresome, but the Wie story never got boring. And the golf was pretty exciting, too.
Before she could drive a car she could outdrive male pros—and did so at PGA events, from the back tees, of course.
I saw her almost make the cut at a PGA tournament twice. The first time was at the Sony Open, and then at the John Deere Classic, in 2005.
At the JDC, it looked like she was going to become the first female since Babe Didrickson Zaharias in 1945 to make it to the weekend, and at 15, the youngest person to do so since Bob Panasik in 1957.
After a first-round 70, she played the front nine of her second round in 3 under, and was cruising. But it wasn’t to be, as Wie played her 15th and 16th holes in 3 over.
Meanwhile, she was placing highly in women’s tournaments, including majors, and earning good enough grades at Punahou to get into Stanford. She couldn’t play college golf, because she’d already turned pro, at 16.
Injuries, especially to her wrists, dogged her. Some of her detractors said they were the result of her swinging too hard, especially in her attempts to compete with the men.
At the US Women’s Open in 2006, Wie and the rest of the field struggled through a mud bog of a course. The contenders, including her, battled their way to par, hole after hole.
On her 16th hole of the second round, it appeared she had cracked. Her tee shot on the par-4 put her ball to the left of the fairway, behind a pile of dead leaves and almost encased in mud. A relief drop brought none but cost her a stroke.
“I dropped my ball in the worst place ever,” she said after the round.
The only thing Wie had going for her was a clear line of sight to the pin, 140 yards away. The safe play would have been a recovery to the fairway, and maybe a bogey for the hole.
But she went for it. Her 8-iron made it through the mud and other muck with enough force to solidly connect with the ball—which landed on the green and stopped 10 feet from the cup. She made the par putt.
It was one of the two or three best golf shots I’ve ever seen, but she paid a price for it. Wie grimaced and shook her left wrist, before smiling when she saw where the ball ended up.
She finished tied for third, but that was when I realized what a fighter she is. It would still be a few years, but she didn’t need to “learn how to win”—this is a sport where even the most gifted players need a break now and then to succeed.
She pushed hard, but it seemed to always be by her choice. Her parents caught a lot of criticism for all kinds of things, but I never saw anything that even seemed like a hint of them forcing her to practice or otherwise put more time into golf than she wanted to.
All pro golfers have moments when they look like they’d rather be anywhere than on the course, finishing up a round in the 80s. She was no exception. But Wie started every round of every tournament I ever saw her in full of excitement and optimism.
She had finally won, twice, when she did so again at the Lotte, here in Hawaii, in 2014. Two months later she finally captured a major, at the US Women’s Open.
One of her childhood records was broken by Allisen Corpuz, who was five months younger than the 10-year-old Wie was when she qualified for the US Amateur Public Links Championship.
Now, Corpuz, 25, also a Punahou grad, is one shot off the lead heading into today’s final round of the US Women’s Open—which was Wie West’s final tournament.
Wie West, 33, missed the cut, but ended her career with a 35-foot birdie putt Friday. That had to be sweet, especially since so many critics said her short game would keep her from ever winning.
“I’m proud of being fearless at times and just doing what felt right,” she said last week, before her final tournament. “I hope that I inspire a lot of other girls to make bold and fearless decisions and choices in their careers, as well.”
Corpuz might say she already has.